There is a taut simplicity to the premise and the plot of this novel. It speaks of love in the face of difference and societal violence. This is a novel about caste and the resilient force that it is, but it is also about how strangely vulnerable caste and its guardians seem to feel in the face of love, and how it often seems to assert itself both in everyday acts of discrimination as well as in moments of most unimaginable violence.

Perumal Murugan seems to have a way of slipping into the emotional space of his characters, especially the women, in an incredibly tender way. Both Saroja and Marayi come through as complex characters with pasts, desires, fears and frustrations. Saroja’s misgivings about the prudence of her decision to elope with Kumaresan are as palpable as her constant effort not to give voice to them.

His important male protagonists too, like Kali in Maadhorubaagan and Kumaresan here, are loving and kind, certainly men of their times but also men who rage against their times. All his characters seem extremely believable to me, very singular yet reminding us of people we might know, shining with the possibility that we could find them, or people like them, out in the ‘real’ world.

Although I am a native Tamil speaker, the particularities of the Kongu dialects did lead to some moments of doubts and anxiety. Theodore Baskaran came to my aid when I needed it most.

Kannan Sundaram of Kalachuvadu Publications, who has published both Maadhorubaagan and Pookkuzhi, has shown a very steady confidence in me, which has helped in times of acute self-doubt.

It is an act of trust on Perumal Murugan’s part to let me translate his work. There is something life-affirming about the kindness and love with which he approaches his characters, the warmth with which he treats them. His works invite vulnerability on the part of the readers and draw us into their rich details of life, landscape, ecology and social life of a region. It is an honour to have opportunities to interact with him and serve as a kind of medium, albeit an imperfect one, through which some of his novels reach a different readership.

—Aniruddhan Vasudevan

February 14, 2016

Austin, Texas

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