Modern & contemporary fiction (post c 1945)
Tamarind History
by Sundara Ramaswamy
Description
With a narrative breadth never before seen in Tamil fiction, Sundara Ramaswamy's Tamarind History inaugurated a new era in Tamil letters. Its meditations on the loss of beloved places; the shared experience of the past; and the meaning of togetherness amid struggle, ambition and enmity, all flow from the life of an aged tamarind tree that stands at the centre of a bustling town. This town's wild places - their mythic pasts still treasured by an old wanderer and the youth who listen to his tales-are stripped away as politicians commit to modernization in the name of progress. Yet the town remains filled with life and beauty, even as it is irrevocably damaged. Tamarind History first published in 1966 has sold more than a 125,000 copies in Tamil in this millennium and is probably the highest selling literary fiction even today. Critic K.M.George cited this novel while listing Indian language writers deserving the Nobel Prize.
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Rights Information
Published in India in English* (PRH) Hebrew (Hakibbutz Hameuchad), Malayalam (SPCS Publication), Hindi (Harper Collins) and, Kannada (Lankesh Prakashana). *International English edition by Amazon crossing will be published in 2020.
Reviews
Among the many narrative modes prevalent in pre-modern India, the sthalapurana (or place-legend) enjoys a special stature. It is normally associated with a local temple and tells the story of how the temple came to be built on that site. Sthalapuranas inevitably feature kings, queens or hermits and involve divine visitations in one form or another. What we might learn about the place and the people who live there is incidental. When the modern novel came to India in the late nineteenth century, the sthalapurana provided a ready framework of story-telling, except that, instead of god, a society in transition was the protagonist. This format facilitated multiple plot-lines that could be woven around a community of people who were confined not just by geography but also by tradition, livelihood and modes of feeling.The sthalapurana-like framework did well in America, where the self-consciously democratic emphasis on the ‘little man’ (or woman) naturally led to a plethora of small-town narratives. Famous works such as Sherwood Anderson’s Winesburg, Ohio (1916), Sinclair Lewis Main Street (1920), the many tales of Faulkner set in the mythical Yoknapatawpha County (1930-60), and Garrison Keillor’s Lake Wobegon Days (1985) testify to America’s endless fascination with the dynamics of small town existence. Closer to our time, we have had Gabriel Garcia Marquez’s Macondo enthralling us with its magic.In India, however, our literary tryst with small communities appears to have been short-lived. We have several novels and short stories by RK Narayan set in the fictional town of Malgudi, OV Vijayan’s The Legend of Khasak (1969) and The Saga of Dharmapuri (1985), Raja Rao’s Kanthapura (1938) among the more well known books. In most Indian languages, though, place-centred narratives have been few and far between. Except in historical narratives describing a remote past, place was seldom the leading protagonist in Tamil fiction. Literary fiction tended to be more about existential and moral questions faced by individuals, and in later days, about class and caste conflicts.Sundara Ramaswamy’s Oru Puliamarathin Kathai (1966), which gave us the ‘local’ history of a traffic junction in Nagercoil town of southern Tamilnadu, belonged to this loosely defined sthalapurana genre. Also published in the same year was Krithika’s Vasavechvaram(1966), a fictional village created by the author to critique the sexual mores and hypocrisies of men and women who inhabited the eponymous village. In 1970 appeared Neela Padmanabhan’s celebrated novel, Pallikondapuram (English Translation: Where the Lord Sleeps, IndianWriting, 2008), where a forsaken man’s torment is reflected in the physical reality of Thiruvananthapuram when it was still the capital of the Travancore dynasty.Along with the other two novels, and perhaps even ahead of them in the assessment of many critics and readers, Oru Puliamaratthin Kathai has been hailed as a classic, a novel read keenly by successive generations of readers even today. It has also been translated into English and several Indian languages. The first English translation, published by Penguin, appeared in 1995 as Tale of a Tamarind Tree. In 2013, Penguin published a second translation, Tamarind History, as part of their Modern Classics series of works from Indian languages.
Author Biography
"Sundara Ramaswamy was a renowned writer in Tamil, incomparable in his reach and versatility. His perennial interest in experimenting with forms and themes had kept him within an ever-evolving act of creation. He had developed for himself a unique sense of narration, marked by a keen sense for local dialects and a sense of humour. His stories made delightful and compelling reading. The Tamarind Tree (1966), his first novel, and J.J. Some Jottings (1981) have a cult following. All three novels of Su Raa are scheduled to be issued by Penguin under its Modern Classics Series. One of our iconic writers, Ramaswamy’s stories are an ironic take on modernity’s slow ingress into traditional ways of life. He was honored for his work with the Lifetime Achievement award from the University of Toronto (2001) and Katha Chudamani award (2004)."
Kalachuvadu Publications (Pvt.) Ltd.
Kalachuvadu Publications, established in 1995, publishes literary fiction, non-fiction, and poetry in Tamil. We publish international writings in translation. With a catalogue of over 1,000 titles, Kalachuvadu is a vibrant presence in the landscape of Tamil and Indian publishing. KP’s chronological variorum editions of acclaimed Tamil modernists has set the benchmark for other publishers. Its bestselling series of academic titles have also been well regarded for their relevance and readability. It was awarded the Best Publisher Award by Publishing Next (2018) as well as the Romain Rolland award for the best translation from French to an Indian language (2018). It also won the Federation of India Publishers’ Best Book Production Award (2019).
View all titlesBibliographic Information
- Publisher Kalachuvadu Publications Pvt. Ltd.
- Publication Date March 1996
- ISBN/Identifier 9788190080101
- Publication Country or regionIndia
- FormatPaperback
- Primary Price 250 INR
- Pages224
- ReadershipGeneral
- Publish StatusPublished
- Original Language TitleOru Puliyamarathin Kathai
- Original Language AuthorsSundara Ramaswamy
- Edition28
- Copyright Year1996
- Dimensions140x215 mm
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