The Secret of More
By Tejaswini Apte-Rahm
In Fire Bird Perumal Murugan takes a universal story of lives that are tied to land and tells it with astonishing particularity. Janani Kannan's translation carries into English the rhythms not only of Tamil but of an entire way of being in the world.
The protagonist’s quest for new fertile land and the familial conflict compelling Muthannan to take this arduous journey is brilliantly juxtaposed with the character’s determined effort to overcome his passive nature. The story doesn’t wallow in sentimentality or solicit sympathy for the protagonist. The two women possess significant dramatic purpose and a will force strong enough to affect the outcome. Paati is one of the finest grandmother figures written, reminding me of Pather Panchali.
Intense and absorbing from the very first sentence, Perumal Murugan's Firebird is a masterpiece of its kind. A story of displacement and migration, it captures a way of life that has long receded from our modern consciousness, values that have dimmed from our minds, and a visceral sense of belonging to land that we can perhaps no longer experience. With its tender attention to the ordinary poetry of life, the nuances of human-animal symbiosis, and rebellion against tradition, it stands out in his remarkably rich oeuvre as a great and memorable novel, deftly brought to life in English by Janani Kannan.
In the heart of the rural south, a young man sets out in his bullock cart to find land where he can build a new future, away from his own family. The reasons for his breaking away, and the hardships during the journey resonate with the slow rhythm of the cart and the diurnal challenges of survival. The novel is a simple yet eloquent portrayal of a life that is already fading from our collective memory, and needs to be preserved.
It’s a powerful evocative story of the ordinary life. A quest for land, belonging and home after leaving family, community and the familiar. For readers in English, and not from rural Tamil Nadu, it’s an immersion into a world , a time , a place that will enrich your understanding of a part of our country in a way that you will carry it with you long after you turn the last page.
Explore the books
By Brinda Charry
By Geet Chaturvedi
Translated by Anita Gopalan
By Janice Pariat
By Bikram Sharma
By Tanuj Solanki
By Tejaswini Apte-Rahm
By Manoranjan Byapari
Translated by V. Ramaswamy
By Vikramajit Ram
By Manoj Rupda
Translated by Hansda Sowvendra Shekhar
By Perumal Murugan
Translated by Janani Kannan
A distinguished jury from diverse backgrounds brings forth the Longlist, Shortlist and Winner of the JCB Prize for Literature, year on year.
Author and Translator (Chair)
Playwright and Stage Director
Mahesh Dattani is a playwright, stage director, and mentor. His works as a playwright have been translated and performed in many languages across India and abroad.
For his anthology Final Solutions and Other Plays, Dattani received the Sahitya Akademi Award. His works as a director include an adaptation in English of Tagore's story Chokher Bali for Barnard College, Columbia University, an adaptation of Lorca's Blood Wedding for ICS Theatre, New Jersey, Snapshots of a Fervid Sunrise, written and directed by him.
Recently he worked with This is Not a Theatre Company in New York to write and direct an audio piece, A Little Drape of Heaven, which was picked by The New York Times as among the top five things to catch in New York.His film work as a writer and director includes Mango Souffle (2000) and Morning Raga (2003). He is the Artistic Director of Playpen Performing Arts Trust, a group dedicated to mentoring and producing new works for the theatre. He lives in Mumbai, India.
Author, Critic and Learning Designer
Author and Surgeon
Kavery Nambisan started her writing career with children’s books. Her adult novels include The Scent of Pepper, A Story that Must Not be Told and A Town Like Ours. Her non-fiction book A Luxury Called Health is her most recent work. She also contributes articles and essays to national newspapers and international anthologies. She went to Iowa University on an international writing fellowship; to Pakistan on a Fullbright and Iowa sponsored literary progamme; to Shanghai as a writer in residence with her late husband and poet Vijay Nambisan.
Kavery graduated in medicine from St John’s Medical College, Bangalore, did her higher surgical training in the UK and obtained the Fellowship of the Royal College of Surgeons, London. She has since built her career working as a surgeon in rural India including parts of Bihar, UP and Tamil Nadu and Karnataka.
Kavery Nambisan lives and works in Kodagu.
Conservation Journalist and Filmmaker
Swati Thiyagarajan is a multi-award winning conservation journalist who pioneered conservation and wildlife reporting for television in India . She is the former Environment Editor of NDTV and helmed and created one of their flagship shows Born Wild. She authored the book Born Wild, Journeys into the wild hearts of India and Africa. She is also a documentary filmmaker, her film The Animal Communicator has racked up over 8 million views on YouTube since 2012 and is available on Amazon Prime in the US and UK.
She was the Associate Producer on the Academy Award winning My Octopus Teacher and is at present working for the Sea Change Project in Cape Town.
