About the Book

A COLLECTION OF MACABRE STORIES FROM INDU MENON, WHO IS CONSIDERED TO BE KAMALA DAS'S SUCCESSOR

A Gond tribal activist is kidnapped by the goons of a giant mining company forcibly acquiring land in his village. In order to defame him, they shoot a porn film with him and a young prostitute who turns out to be his childhood sweetheart; a cobbler skins his daughter's hanging corpse to make the special 'Cinderella shoes' he had once promised her; an LTTE female tiger accused of plotting the assassination of an Indian leader ruminates on the deaths of a Sri Lankan Tamil separatist leader and a French priest who tried to assassinate Louis XV on the same date centuries apart; a nurse with bovine features stalks a female patient whose live-in partner confronts the lesbian cow and is assaulted by her.

Indu Menon's stories are not for the fainthearted. At the centre of all that blood, gore and broken bones lies the inveterate spirit of wronged women, who refuse to go down without a fight. Her stories live unvarnished life truths. With the imagination of a poet, in lyrical and inventive prose, her narratives startle the reader by refusing to draw the line between lived and imagined terrains. Many consider Indu Menon a successor to Kamala Das, having inherited the same insouciance and outlook. This collection may well help us imagine what Das would have written if she were alive today.

About the Author

Indu Menon's story collections Sangh Parivar, The Muslim Man with a Hindu Visage and A Lesbian Cow contain the most provocative and explosive contemporary Malayalam stories on secular politics and political correctness. Three main factors that differentiate Indu from the other writers of her generation are her extraordinary artistry and stylisation in prose, rapier-sharp boldness in enunciating feminine desire and trenchant politicisation of social and historical narratives.

About the Translator

Nandakumar K. started his career as a sub-editor at Financial Express, followed by stints in international marketing and general management in India and abroad. He has co-translated M. Mukundan's Delhi: A Soliloquy from Malayalam.