Stories of the True
Stories of the True
B. Jeyamohan (translated by Priyamvada Ramkumar)
- Language: English
- Print Length: 328 Pages
- ISBN-10: 9789393986184
- ISBN-13: 978-9393986184
A publisher’s wife comes to the rescue of an impoverished author who her husband has cheated; the son of a labourer faces off against an unscrupulous zamindar and wins; a forest officer finds himself transformed by his encounter with an ‘elephant doctor’; a Nayadi makes it to the civil services but struggles to do right by his tribal mother; tormented by questions of the self, a writer climbs up to the Kailash after being diagnosed with spinal cancer; a visionary breaks laws and braves solitary confinement for his idea of a borderless world.
Containing iconic stories like ‘Elephant Doctor’ and ‘A Hundred Armchairs’, this collection by the great Tamil writer Jeyamohan, brings together twelve inspiring and imaginative narratives, all based on the lives of real people. These stories explore the capacity of humans to hold on to their intrinsic goodness in the face of both the everyday and the extraordinary, and how their response in such moments of truth finds expression in multitudinous ways – as anger, compassion, fortitude, a capacity for suffering, self-discovery, a life of silent protest or even eccentric activism.
Gripping, often raw and deeply moving, this striking collection, the first major translation of Jeyamohan’s work in English, will renew your faith in humanity.
A publisher’s wife comes to the rescue of an impoverished author who her husband has cheated; the son of a labourer faces off against an unscrupulous zamindar and wins; a forest officer finds himself transformed by his encounter with an ‘elephant doctor’; a Nayadi makes it to the civil services but struggles to do right by his tribal mother; tormented by questions of the self, a writer climbs up to the Kailash after being diagnosed with spinal cancer; a visionary breaks laws and braves solitary confinement for his idea of a borderless world.
Containing iconic stories like ‘Elephant Doctor’ and ‘A Hundred Armchairs’, this collection by the great Tamil writer Jeyamohan, brings together twelve inspiring and imaginative narratives, all based on the lives of real people. These stories explore the capacity of humans to hold on to their intrinsic goodness in the face of both the everyday and the extraordinary, and how their response in such moments of truth finds expression in multitudinous ways – as anger, compassion, fortitude, a capacity for suffering, self-discovery, a life of silent protest or even eccentric activism.
Gripping, often raw and deeply moving, this striking collection, the first major translation of Jeyamohan’s work in English, will renew your faith in humanity.
Author Bios:
B. Jeyamohan (b. 1962), based in Nagercoil, Tamil Nadu, is a pre-eminent writer in modern Tamil literature. His most significant work yet is a twenty-six part roman-fleuve called Venmurasu (The White Drum), a serialized reimagination of the Mahabharata. Spanning more than twenty-five thousand pages, it is amongst the longest literary works in the world.
Apart from other landmark novels such as Vishnupuram (1997) and Kotravai (2005), his body of work includes more than three hundred short stories, many volumes of literary criticism, biographies, travelogues, introductory texts to Indian and Western literature as well as essays on heritage and philosophy. He has received many honours, including the Akilan Memorial Prize for his first novel, and the Katha Samman, the Sanskriti Samman and the Iyal Award (Canada) in later years.
He can be found at https://www.jeyamohan.in/.
Priyamvada Ramkumar, based in Chennai, India, is a private equity investor by day. A 2023 PEN/Heim Translation Fund grant awardee, Stories of the True is her first book-length work.
B. Jeyamohan (b. 1962), based in Nagercoil, Tamil Nadu, is a pre-eminent writer in modern Tamil literature. His most significant work yet is a twenty-six part roman-fleuve called Venmurasu (The White Drum), a serialized reimagination of the Mahabharata. Spanning more than twenty-five thousand pages, it is amongst the longest literary works in the world.
Apart from other landmark novels such as Vishnupuram (1997) and Kotravai (2005), his body of work includes more than three hundred short stories, many volumes of literary criticism, biographies, travelogues, introductory texts to Indian and Western literature as well as essays on heritage and philosophy. He has received many honours, including the Akilan Memorial Prize for his first novel, and the Katha Samman, the Sanskriti Samman and the Iyal Award (Canada) in later years.
He can be found at https://www.jeyamohan.in/.
Priyamvada Ramkumar, based in Chennai, India, is a private equity investor by day. A 2023 PEN/Heim Translation Fund grant awardee, Stories of the True is her first book-length work.
