Trial By Silence
by Perumal Murugan
Description
At the end of Perumal Murugan’s trailblazing novel One Part Woman, readers are left on a cliffhanger as Kali and Ponna’s intense love for each other is torn to shreds. What is going to happen next to this beloved couple?
In Trial by Silence-one of two inventive sequels that picks up the story right where One Part Woman ends-Kali is determined to punish Ponna for what he believes in an absolute betrayal. But Ponna is equally upset at being forced to atone for something that was not her fault. In the wake of the temple festival, both must now confront harsh new uncertainties in their once idyllic life together.
In Murugan’s magical hands, this story reaches a surprising and dramatic conclusion.
‘The most accomplished of his generation of Tamil writers’ - Caravan.
‘[An] extraordinary writer’ The Hindu
More Information
Rights Information
Published in English in Indian subcontinent (Penguin Random House). Hindi rights sold to Harper collins. Malayalam rights sold to DC books. English rights other than Indian sub-continent open.
Reviews
Tamil writer Perumal Murugan’s new novels, A Lonely Harvest and Trial by Silence brings back the couple he had made famous in his controversial novel, One Part Woman.
The sequels give two different scenarios, one (A Lonely Harvest) in which Kali kills himself unable to bear the pain of Ponna’s betrayal in going to another man. In the other, Trial by Silence, he survives to live another day.
“Many readers of One Part Woman wondered what would happen to Kali at the end of the novel,” says the author in the preface to the sequels. If Murugan took the ritual surrounding a temple festival to a new level in One Part Woman, dissecting gender, divinity and love, his focus in the sequels is more on the mundane things.
Though the sequels start in different directions with a suicide and a suicide attempt, they both chart similar journeys in celebrating life. A major voice in Dalit literature in the country, the author gathers his characters in the two novels to question the traditions that hand over power inside households to men. In A Lonely Harvest, the community learns that Ponna is pregnant, three months after Kali’s death. Though it begins with a death, the plot unravels to chart a different journey. While the three women - Ponna, mother Vallayi and mother-in-law Seerayi - come together to write their own stories, many barriers are broken and many egos are bruised.
In Trial by Silence, Kali lives to face the consequences of a ritual when he learns that Ponna is pregnant. Set over a century ago, the sequels smell of a contemporariness soaked in gender inequality and injustice. Two old women standing by a young woman, pregnant three months after the death of her husband, is an open revolt to present-day stigmas frozen in medieval mindsets. Murugan’s efforts to tie his women characters to their land form the central part of his new novels. Ponna’s farm, left idle by the departure of Kali in one and his indifference in the other, is the antithesis of the festival for divine conception in One Part Woman. If his previous novel dealt with the rituals surrounding a “half-female god”, his new novels dwell on the strengths of a woman liberated from her bonding.
Faizal Khan, Financial Express
Author Biography
Perumal Murugan is one of the most renowned Indian writers in Tamil today. He writes chiefly on the lives lived in the margins, in terse lyrical prose. He has to his credit eleven novels, four collection of short stories and four anthologies of poetry.
Five of his novels have been translated into English. Perumal Murugan’s works have won critical acclaim and earned him several national Awards.
Winner of ILF Samanvay Bhasha Samman 2015. He was invited to be Vice President of PEN International in 2018
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
- ISBN/Identifier 9789382033875
- Publication Country or regionIndia
- FormatPaperback
- Primary Price 200 INR
- Pages192
- Publish StatusPublished
- Original Language TitleArthanaari
- Edition3
- Copyright Year2014
- Dimensions140x215 mm
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