Revenge is best served chilled. Or so thought the schoolteacher who is the central character in Tamil writer Devibharati's first novel translated into English, The Loneliness of the Shadow. An anonymous man has been waiting for 30 years to get revenge on the town's powerful man who sexually assaulted his underage sister. When the moment finally arrives, he finds himself unraveling.
Devibharati's writings over the past three decades have established him as a major figure in Tamil literature, primarily by exploring caste and gender politics through powerful storytelling across the genres of drama, short stories, novels, and essays. did. The original title of The Shadow of Loneliness in Tamil, Nijarin Thanimai, is his first novel, published in 2012. Devibharati's English readers are familiar with Farewell, Mahatma, an English translation of his collection of Tamil short stories published in 2014. The idea of ​​freedom.
In The Shadow of Solitude, the author travels back several decades to set the stage for one man's struggle to come to terms with the weight of caste and gender constraints. The book begins with the only clerk at a small town public school arriving on assignment. It soon becomes clear that his main purpose in the city is to find the loan shark responsible for his sister's lifelong trauma and have him punished for his atrocities.
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The nameless clerk approaches his work with great care and in the process befriends Karunakaran, a loan shark who comes to control most of the town's affairs. The clerk, who has gained a foothold in Karunakaran's house, is waiting for the right time to stab Karunakaran to death and settle the matter, as we find out. It's not easy to commit murder, the clerk soon discovers. As he changes tactics and pursues his goals, things begin to spiral out of control.
Debibarati walks a fine line between crime and retribution, analyzing the social prejudices that run through caste and gender identity. School clerks belong to lower castes, while usurers enjoy the privileges of upper castes. As he sets out to take revenge for the attack on his sister 30 years ago, the store clerk encounters a moment when social prejudice weighs heavily on his shoulders.
Told by a school clerk as present and past events collide at regular intervals, this novel moves from the ghostly shadows of caste and criminal charges with a fascinating sense of time and space. . The clerk's mind is clouded with doubts about the goals she has set for herself and her sister. Will his purpose make him the same perpetrator of the crime as Karunakaran himself? Such questions trouble his mind and expand the creative canvas of his novels to include the morality and ethics of human behavior and relationships. N. Kalyan Raman, translator of Devibharati and Farewell, Mahatma, deftly moves language through a whirlpool of ethical and philosophical suspension to bring the story to its conclusion. I will guide you. This novel joins a growing list of translations from Indian languages ​​that reveal the perplexing backwardness of mind and body as society strives to further modernize.
Book: Shadow of Solitude
Author: Devi Bharati
Translated from Tamil by N Kalyan Raman
Publisher: HarperCollins
208 pages, 399 rupees