ISSUE DATE: May 24, 2021
UPDATED: May 14, 2021 18:02 IST
Novelist V. Annamalai a.k.a. Imayam
The novelist V. Annamalai (Imayam) wears his Dravidian heritage with pride, but he has also always rebelled against the idea of a Dravidian or Dalit literature. “When you write, it’s literature, but when I write, it’s Dalit literature?” he has famously demanded.
Sellatha Panam, the novel for which he won the 2020 Sahitya Akademi Award in Tamil, is about love that turned to hate, and the woman dying in a burns ward because of it. His unflinching novella about honour killing, Pethavan (available in English as The Begetter), was based on the particular case of a woman, or, if you like, on the many cases that occur daily in India whenever two people marry across caste divisions.
I Write My Life; I Write How I Live : Sahitya Akademi Winner Imayam
The Tamil writer believes the Sahitya Akademi should have recognised his work over the last 25 years, and not only now.
Caste14/Mar/2021
Chennai: âIt is almost an injustice,â says Tamil writer Imayam, about the Sahitya Akademi award recently given for him. âI have been writing for 25 years now, my first novel
Koveru Kazhuthaigal (
Mule) has seen its 25th anniversary special edition. They say justice delayed is justice denied. I think every novel I wrote, right from
Koveru Kazhuthaigal, deserved the Sahitya Akademi award, and they have now given it for