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Canons To The South

Includes stories from an earlier generation of writers who are no more and ignores the new generation that's registered a strong presence in the last one or two decades.

In the Floods
The Goddess of Revenge
After Hanging
The Death of Makhan Singh
Bhaskara Pattelar
My Life

However, it does reflect the growth of the Malayalam short story over the last 60 years. There’s a variety of themes and forms. So there is the story of a headmaster who steals a packet of rice from a student (The Packet of Rice by Karoor), the cruelty of man-woman relationships (Scooter by Sarah Joseph), the fierce condemnation of religious insularity and totalitarian power (Anal Haq by Basheer), the quietly ironic reflection on the solitude and estrangement of a young Indian in Philadelphia (Sherlock by M.T.), a youth’s dream-like love for a schoolgirl (The Night Queen by S.K. Pottekkat) and more.

The translations are uniformly faithful. The anthology, however, ignores a whole new generation of Malayalam writers. Strange that a ‘contemporary’ compilation should have stories from an earlier generation of writers who are no more and ignores the new generation that’s registered a strong presence in the last one or two decades.

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