At the Cusp of Ages

This is the English translation of the Tamil Novel 'Yugasandhi' by Vaasanthi.

At the Cusp of Ages is a story of women at a crossroads—where millennia meet and disperse. It is a story of women—abject, intimidated, absurd and betrayed. It is also about women who refuse to accept male domination as an inevitable way of life. It is about the fragility of our 'secular' fabric, about how at times of crisis even those we believe we love are suddenly suspect in our eyes.

In this often disturbing novel that nevertheless ends on a note of some hope, three generations of women express their inmost thoughts to the reader. The first is Meenakshi who stoically, even shamelessly, accepts the infidelity of her husband and her son. The next generation is represented by Carla who constantly seeks to submerge her Europeanness in her growing Indianness, until one day she walks away.

Gayatri, Shakeela and Valli, caught in political and personal maelstroms, struggle to find their identities in a mindless society that treats them as worse than pawns. They find strength in friendship and the hope, however timid, that love can blossom again.
Vaasanthi probes our psyches with ferocious honesty and delicate understanding.

About the author

A former editor of India Today’s Tamil edition, Vaasanthi has authored several novels, short story collections, volumes of journalistic articles and travelogues. As a novelist and journalist, she has been a champion of human rights, gender equalities, and communal harmony. She has won many awards for her writings, which have been translated into various Indian and European languages. Her novel Aakasa Veedugal, published in English as A Home in the Sky by Indian Writing in 2007, has also been translated into Hindi and Czech.

About the translator

This book has been translated from Tamil into English by N Kalyan Raman.

An engineer by profession, Kalyan Raman has worked in the field of telecommunications for over three decades. He has also been a translator of Tamil fiction for the past fifteen years. His published works include three volumes of Ashokamitran’s fiction in English translation: The Colours of Evil (1998), Sand and Other Stories (with Gomathi Narayanan, 2002) and Mole! (2005). He has also translated poems by leading contemporary Tamil poets for publication in several journals and anthologies. Essays and book reviews by him have appeared in The Book Review, Biblio, Outlook, Gentleman, Deccan Herald, The Hindu and The Indian Review of Books.