The Abyss
The Abyss
B. Jeyamohan (Translated by Suchitra Ramachandran)
- Language: English
- Print Length: 352 Pages
- ISBN-10: 9789393986528
- ISBN-13: 978-9393986528
Pothivelu Pandaram is known as a successful and God-fearing man about town – he has a loyal wife, three daughters and ample money to pay for their dowries. However, it is an open secret that his success is fuelled by a tawdry yet deeply profitable trade – for he owns a group of physically deformed beggars and places them outside various temples to make money for him. The beggars are mere ‘items’ to Pandaram, hardly human, to be bought and sold like cattle. But when the novel descends right into their world – the world of the ‘abyss’ – and places the reader in their midst, it takes on a marvellous, unexpected turn.
Bitter, black, raw and yet laced with humour and tenderness, The Abyss (Ezhaam Ulagam) is one of the most acclaimed works of the great Tamil writer Jeyamohan. It was adapted into an acclaimed film in 2009 called Naan Kadavul (I am God) which won a National Film Award for its director. Written with an unflinching eye and suffused with a deep existential longing, it is an extraordinary novel – in its terrain, its fundamental questions about humanity and its depiction of human suffering and liberation.
Pothivelu Pandaram is known as a successful and God-fearing man about town – he has a loyal wife, three daughters and ample money to pay for their dowries. However, it is an open secret that his success is fuelled by a tawdry yet deeply profitable trade – for he owns a group of physically deformed beggars and places them outside various temples to make money for him. The beggars are mere ‘items’ to Pandaram, hardly human, to be bought and sold like cattle. But when the novel descends right into their world – the world of the ‘abyss’ – and places the reader in their midst, it takes on a marvellous, unexpected turn.
Bitter, black, raw and yet laced with humour and tenderness, The Abyss (Ezhaam Ulagam) is one of the most acclaimed works of the great Tamil writer Jeyamohan. It was adapted into an acclaimed film in 2009 called Naan Kadavul (I am God) which won a National Film Award for its director. Written with an unflinching eye and suffused with a deep existential longing, it is an extraordinary novel – in its terrain, its fundamental questions about humanity and its depiction of human suffering and liberation.
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 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/.
Suchitra Ramachandran writes fiction in Tamil and translates between Tamil and English. Her work has appeared in journals such as Asymptote and Narrative Magazine. The Abyss is her first full-length translated work to be published. Suchitra lives in Basel, Switzerland.
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 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/.
Suchitra Ramachandran writes fiction in Tamil and translates between Tamil and English. Her work has appeared in journals such as Asymptote and Narrative Magazine. The Abyss is her first full-length translated work to be published. Suchitra lives in Basel, Switzerland.
