Let’s ExploreThe Man Who Learnt to Fly but Could Not Land

  • Author: Thachom Poyil Rajeevan
  • Translator: P.J. Mathew
The Man Who Learnt to Fly but Could Not Land
The Man Who Learnt to Fly but Could Not Land

The story of a K.T.N. Kottoor – activist, lover, communist, friend, saint, sinner- but above all a writer.

Born into a family of rural wealth and near-feudal influence in a village nestled in British Malabar, Koyiloth Thazhe Narayanan Kottoor knows little of want. But as a patriotic fervour grips the country in the last decades of the Raj, a veritable avalanche of new ideas and ideals shapes the young KTN.

As he grows from a boy who takes to writing not only as art but also as a tool of social change, to an activist enamoured of varying philosophies and enmeshed in India's freedom struggle, he grapples with hardship, love, lust and a search for meaning in a reality that forever disappoints. His is a tale both deeply personal and political - tracing a web of caste, sexuality and ideology, while also navigating the struggles of a man coming to terms with himself as a writer and as an individual.

Award-winning author Thachom Poyil Rajeevan weaves a magical almost-biography of a fictional writer, one inhabited by goddesses and ghosts, a fortune-telling parrot, dead humans in the avatar of crows, and a blind woman who hears - and sees - better than anyone else. Masterfully translated from the original Malayalam, The Man Who Learnt to Fly but Could Not Land is a poignant exploration of the power of writing, the chaos of a country's rebirth and the life of an idealist caught up in the maelstrom.

ABOUT THE AUTHORThachom Poyil Rajeevan

Thachom Poyil Rajeevan writes in English and Malayalam. He has published three poetry collections, He Who Was Gone Thus, A Yaksha in America and Kannaki, and a novel, Undying Echoes of Silence, in English, and six poetry collections, three novels, a travelogue and a collection of essays in Malayalam. He has also edited an anthology of poems, Third Word: Post Socialist Poetry, with the Croatian poet Lana Derkac. His novel K.T.N. Kottoor: Ezhuthum Jeevithavum won the Kerala Sahitya Akademi award, and two of his novels were made into motion pictures in Malayalam.

Rajeevan's poems have been translated into more than 14 languages, including French, Italian, Polish, Macedonian, Uzbek, Croatian, Hebrew and Chinese. An alumnus of Iowa University's International Writing Program, he has been a resident writer at Ledig House, Hudson, in New York, the Rockefeller Foundation's Bellagio Center in Italy and the Shanghai Writers' Association in Shanghai.

Thachom Poyil Rajeevan

ABOUT THE TRANSLATORP.J. Mathew

P.J. Mathew is a senior bilingual journalist with three decades of experience in Malayalam journalism in Kerala and two decades in English in New Delhi. His translations into English include V. Muzafer Ahamed's Camels in the Sky.

P.J. Mathew

The JCB Prize in Videos

The Prize Winnersover the years

The JCB Prize for Literature was first awarded in 2018, since then the Prize has been awarded to 6 books.

Perumal Murugan

Perumal Murugan

Perumal Murugan is an Indian author, scholar, and literary chronicler who writes in Tamil. He has written twelve novels, six collections of short stories, six anthologies of poetry, and many non-fiction books. Ten of his novels have been translated into English: Seasons of the Palm, which was shortlisted for the Kiriyama Prize in 2005, Current Show, One Part Woman, A Lonely Harvest, Trail by Silence, Poonachi or the Story of a Goat, Resolve, Estuary, Rising Heat, and Pyre. He was a professor of Tamil at the Government Arts College in Salem Attur and Namakkal.

Know More
Khalid Jawed

Khalid Jawed

Khalid Jawed is one of the leading Urdu novelists today. He is the author of fifteen works of fiction and non-fiction and is a recipient of the Katha Award, the Upendranath Ashk Award, and the UP Urdu Academy Award. He is a professor at Jamia Millia Islamia University.

Know More
S. Hareesh

S. Hareesh

S. Hareesh is the author of three short-story collections: Adam, which received the Kerala Sahitya Akademi Award, Rasavidyayude Charithram, and Appan. He is also a recipient of the Geetha Hiranyan Endowment, the Thomas Mundassery Prize, and the V.P. Sivakumar Memorial Prize. Hareesh is also the author of two screenplays - for the film Aedan, which received the Kerala State Award for best screenplay in 2017, and for the 2019 film Jallikattu, which premiered at the Toronto Film Festival and won a silver peacock at the International Film Festival of India. Hareesh works in the revenue department, and hails from Neendoor in Kottayam district, Kerala.

Know More
Madhuri Vijay

Madhuri Vijay

Madhuri Vijay was born and raised in Bengaluru and now lives in Hawaii where she teaches children at a school is a schoolteacher. "A fortunate benefit of teaching young children,” she says "is that they neither know nor care about how many words you managed to write that day or whether you’ve hit upon the perfect metaphor - working with them is a refreshing and humbling reminder to keep one’s work in proper perspective.” She’s a graduate of the Iowa Writers’ Workshop and the recipient of a Pushcart Prize. Her writing has appeared in Best American Non-Required Reading, Narrative Magazine and Salon, among other publications. In 2010, she wrote a short story about a mother and a daughter and a Kashmiri man. "It was a maudlin story-abysmal, really-but I grew interested in writing a novel about Kashmir.” The Far Field is her first book.

Know More
Benyamin

Benyamin

Benyamin was born 1971 in Nhettur, Kerala. He moved to Bahrain in 1992. Until the age of twenty-one, he knew nothing of literature: "Cricket was my world, better living standards were my aim." When he reached The Gulf, he felt a loneliness that triggered reading and eventually led to writing: "I began with letters to friends. They accepted my words." Today he is an author of over twenty books. Aadujeevitham or Goat Days is his most successful novel and has won him the Kerala Sahitya Akademi Award. He returned from the Middle East to his native state of Kerala in 2013, two years after the Arab revolution ended. A former electrical engineer and now a full-time writer, he lives alone and cooks for himself daily: "I feel, and my friends certify, that I have a talent in it too."

Know More