ആരാച്ചാർ
കെ. ആർ മീര · 2012 · Malayalam
K. R. Meera's novel about a woman who inherits her family's trade as hangman in Kolkata, and the media circus that forms around her. Long, furious, and the book that put Meera at the front of her generation.
An editors' list
The Malayalam canon, past the first three books
Everyone recommending Malayalam fiction recommends the same handful. Past them is where the tradition actually lives: the street novel, three M. T. novels that are not the famous one, the poet who took the first Jnanpith, and the hangwoman.
7 books
ഒരു തെരുവിന്രെ കഥ
S. K. Pottekkatt · 1963 · Malayalam
S. K. Pottekkatt takes a single street and writes everyone on it. The Malayalam novel at its most patient — nothing happens quickly and by the end you know a whole neighbourhood.
കാലം
M. T. Vasudevan Nair · 1969 · Malayalam
M. T. Vasudevan Nair on ambition and the cost of leaving: a young man gets out of the village he was desperate to escape and finds out what he traded for it.
ഓളവും തീരവും
M. T. Vasudevan Nair · 1970 · Malayalam
M. T. again, shorter and harder. He later made it into a film, which is how a good deal of Malayalam fiction reached people who don't read fiction.
ആള്ക്കൂട്ടത്തിൽ തനിയെ
M. T. Vasudevan Nair · 1972 · Malayalam
The third M. T. here, and the title says the theme he never really left: alone in a crowd. If you want to understand what Malayalam prose sounds like at mid-century, read the three of these together.
Udakappola
P. Padmarajan · 2010 · Malayalam
P. Padmarajan wrote fiction and then wrote and directed some of the best-loved films in the language. The prose has the same quality the films do — you are already inside the situation before you have been told anything about it.
Selected poems of G. Sankara Kurup
ജി ശങ്കരക്കുറുപ്പ്ȧ · 1969 · Malayalam
G. Sankara Kurup took the first Jnanpith ever awarded, which makes him the reason the prize has a Malayalam history at all.
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