Ki. Rajanarayanan

Ki. Rajanarayanan (b. 1922) was an acclaimed writer and folklorist. He started writing in the late 1950s. With his firm conviction that the spoken language was the correct language to use while writing, he was a pioneer in the introduction of dialect in his works. He has over thirty books to his credit, the most recent being the novel Andarandap Pakshi (The Andaranda Bird). In 1991, he was honoured with the Sahitya Akademi Award for Gopalapurathu Makkal (The People of Gopalapuram), a novel about a community of Telugu-speaking people who had migrated to Tamil Nadu. He was also the recipient of the Ilakkiya Chinthanai Award in 1979, as well as a Literary Achievement Special Award from the Toronto-based Tamil Literary Garden in 2016. From 1998 to 2002, he was a member of the General Council and Advisory Board of the Sahitya Akademi. As a member of the Communist Party of India, he was twice imprisoned in the late 1940s and early 1950s, for his support for and participation in peasant rebellions. To mark his sixtieth birthday celebrations in 1982, he embarked on the publication of this anthology, Karisal Kadaikal. He passed away in 2021.

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