The Greatest Malayalam Stories Ever Told is a collection of fifty brilliant short stories translated from the Malayalam. Selected and translated by poet, editor, and translator A. J. Thomas, this collection includes established masters such as Karoor Neelakanta Pillai, Vaikom Muhammad Basheer,alithambika Antharjanam, Ponkunnam Varkey, Thakazhi Sivasankara Pillai, S. K. Pottekkatt, Uroob, O. V. Vijayan, M. T. Vasudevan Nair, and Paul Zacharia, as well as accomplished new voices such as N. Prabhakaran, C. V. Balakrishnan, Aymanam John, Chandramathi, and others.
‘The Farmer’ by Thakazhi and ‘The Speaking Plough’ by Varkey deal with the trials and tribulations of villageife. In Pilllai’s story ‘Wooden Dolls’ and Kesadeva’s ‘The Oath’, we encounter the seemingly simple, but intrinsically complex personalities of three rural women characters. In his classic story ‘The World-renowned Nose’, Basheer, the master satirist, resorts to biting satire to expose human vanity. In Antharjanam’s ‘Dhirendu Majumdar’s Mother’, the mother emerges as the revolutionary heroine of the Partition of 1947 and the Bangladeshiberation War of 1971. ‘Humans and Animals’ by Nandanar narrates an unbelievably macabre incident from the horrors of Partition. In O. V. Vijayan’s masterpiece, ‘The Hanging’, the reader is drawn into a father’s sorrow over the death of his child. Madhavikkuty in ‘Scent of a Bird’ draws in bold strokes the existential angst of a modern woman who wishes to make a career for herself. P. Vatsala’s story ‘Pempi’ describes the plight of Adiyar tribal women. M. T. Vasudevan Nair, in his celebrated story, ‘Vision’, underlines the freedom andiberated state of women choosing for themselves. ‘Photo’ by M. Mukundan is a harrowing story about child molestation. Zacharia, in his inimitable style, tells the story of an eccentric and reclusive masseur-physician who is challenged by a patient to heal her in ‘The Garden of the Antlions’. Sara Joseph’s ‘Sweat Marks’ shows how caste elites come together to dupe a brilliant Dalit student. These and other stories in this collection portray with brilliance and nuance the complex tapestry of the Malayali experience down the ages.
