The Ghosts of Arasur
Book Details
Author(s)Era Murukan
PublisherIndian Writing
ISBN / ASINB00ICSL3UI
ISBN-13978B00ICSL3U9
MarketplaceIndia 🇮🇳
Description
This is the English translation of Era Murukan's Tamil novel Arasur Vamsam.
The Ghosts of Arasur tells the story of social change in colonial India - change that reached down to touch the lives of people in the smallest village in Tamil Nadu; a dispossessed chieftain who is never quite sure of his status- king or beggar; a Brahmin who makes his wealth by engaging in a lucrative but forbidden trade; an orthodox Hindu who is forced by circumstances to submit to missionary zeal and convert to Christianity; a brilliant and tragic young man whose mind splinters to lead him to debauchery with a ghost on the one hand and on the other, a luminous understanding of yet-to-come technology with the help of two savvy rogues of the future; sex starved young men and seductive sirens (of the ghostly and foreign variety); over sexed old men and their sly conquests.
Here is a fascinating world, in which spirits and ghosts co-exist comfortably and often, humourously, with real people as well as visitors from the future in which there is nothing strange about the past intruding into the present or the future backtracking to the present to preen its achievements. In The Ghosts of Arasur, the reader gets to peep into the intimate details of ordinary lives in colonial South India - their loves and hates, their jealousies and insecurities, their religions and their professions, their sex lives and their complex family relationships. Here indeed is a book that seduces the reader into its world by the power of its narrative and where the reader will remain happily captive until the last page has been turned.
Era Murukan's magical tale that effortlessly straddles generations glows brightly under the deft treatment of translator Janaki Venkataraman's facile pen.
The Ghosts of Arasur tells the story of social change in colonial India - change that reached down to touch the lives of people in the smallest village in Tamil Nadu; a dispossessed chieftain who is never quite sure of his status- king or beggar; a Brahmin who makes his wealth by engaging in a lucrative but forbidden trade; an orthodox Hindu who is forced by circumstances to submit to missionary zeal and convert to Christianity; a brilliant and tragic young man whose mind splinters to lead him to debauchery with a ghost on the one hand and on the other, a luminous understanding of yet-to-come technology with the help of two savvy rogues of the future; sex starved young men and seductive sirens (of the ghostly and foreign variety); over sexed old men and their sly conquests.
Here is a fascinating world, in which spirits and ghosts co-exist comfortably and often, humourously, with real people as well as visitors from the future in which there is nothing strange about the past intruding into the present or the future backtracking to the present to preen its achievements. In The Ghosts of Arasur, the reader gets to peep into the intimate details of ordinary lives in colonial South India - their loves and hates, their jealousies and insecurities, their religions and their professions, their sex lives and their complex family relationships. Here indeed is a book that seduces the reader into its world by the power of its narrative and where the reader will remain happily captive until the last page has been turned.
Era Murukan's magical tale that effortlessly straddles generations glows brightly under the deft treatment of translator Janaki Venkataraman's facile pen.
