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Tamil writer, journalist, political columnist
and rights activist, the multi-faceted Vaasanthi
has written over forty books, including novels
and short stories. She has been translated into
Czech, Dutch, English, Hindi, Malayalam and
Norwegian.
She has earned wide recognition for her work and
has received the Punjab Sahitya Academy Award
for her contribution to Indian literature. Other
honours include the Uttar Pradesh Sahitya
Sansthan Award, the Gyana Bharathi Award and the
Best Novel of the Year Award for Ammani.
Widely-traveled, Vaasanthi has presented papers
at literary, journalistic and women's
conferences across the world. She has conducted
seminal research on the plight of women bidi
workers in Tamil Nadu's Arcot district and on
female infanticide in the state's Usilampatti
region.
A graduate from Mysore University, Vaasanthi
holds a post-graduate certificate of merit from
the University of Oslo. She worked as editor of
the Tamil edition of the India Today
newsmagazine for nine years. She currently
freelances as a print and visual media
consultant.
Gomathi Narayanan
Gomathi Narayanan has taught in Kerala and New
Delhi. Her translations from Tamil have appeared
in Sahitya Akademi's Indian Literature and other
periodicals. Among others, she has translated
Vaasanthi's novel Mauna Puyal as The Silent
Storm. She lives in Chennai.
V. Ramnarayan
V. Ramnarayan works for a Chennai-based
corporate communications firm and has written
extensively on cricket, a game he played at the
first-class level. He is an occasional
translator from Tamil to English and has also
edited several books.
The Guilty and other stories
Uma and Maadhav, traumatized victims of their
childhood, have agonized for two decades to
unravel the painful mystery of their mother's
suicide. More isolated and alone, their father
Balasubramanian too grapples with a past that
does not cease to haunt him ….
This anthology is a veritable treat with its
many tales and the twists …
A young bride takes courage in her hands to defy
a tyrannical social custom. For decades a
patriarch has lorded over the numerous women in
the household, until one of them rebels.
Declared mad by the husband, a wife is forced to
confinement in a sanatorium. Nostalgia tugs at
an expatriate as he is haunted by the fear that
his roots will fade away.
As ever, Vaasanthi's power lies in the
quintessential humanist perspective that she
brings to her incisive writing. Her characters,
mostly female, deal with injustices within their
social circumstances in most unique ways, making
for evocative and haunting endings. |
