An Order from the Sky and Other Stories

By Imayam| Trans. Vasantha Surya

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About the book

A man offering curses and prayers, gifts and threats to his favourite deity before embarking upon a day of thieving…

A woman in a packed bus, desperate to get home before her clothes are soaked with menstrual blood, but also determined to save a seat for a fellow woman…

A loyal, ageing party worker, hoping to finally contest an election, but discovering instead the worm in the apple of democracy…

Set for the most part in the small towns and villages of present-day Tamil Nadu, these stories describe the aspirations and agonies of the men and women living and working there: what they want is to survive and thrive as human beings. Imayam – winner of the Sahitya Akademi Award, and one of the most significant Tamil writers today – peers into their lives and observes them with rare empathy and attention. Written in spare, modern prose spiced with pungent regional dialect, and brought brilliantly to new life in Vasantha Surya’s luminous translation, An Order from the Sky and Other Stories redefines the possibilities of Indian fiction.

Pages: 356

Available in:

Language: English

Imayam

Imayam is the pen name of V. Annamalai, a schoolteacher and one of the foremost contemporary writers in Tamil. He has seven novels, six short-story collections and a novella to his credit. He has won several prestigious awards, including the Agni Akshara Award (1994), the Tamil Nadu Progressive Writers’ Association Award (1994), the Amudhan Adigal Literary Award (1998), the Thamizh Thendral Thiru.Vi.Ka. Award (2009), the Anantha Vikatan Award (2016), the Iyal Award for Lifetime Achievement (2018), The Hindu’s Jayakanthan Award for Contemporary Tamil Literature (2018), and most recently, the Sahitya Akademi Award in 2020 for his novel Selladha Panam.

Trans. Vasantha Surya

Vasantha Surya is a poet, journalist, and translator whose prose translations from Tamil include six novels, and an anthology of contemporary short fiction (A Place to Live). The Stalk of Time and A Word Between Us are her two poetry collections in English, while among her translations of poetry are To Plunge Within, a selection of verses from the Tamil classic, Nammaaazhwaar’s Thiruvaimozhi, and several poems in Tamil Dalit Writing. The Ballad of Budhni is her translation of a narrative folk poem from Bundeli Hindi. Her works for children include Mridu in Madras, translated into Tamil by Prema Srinivasan and herself, and Ramayana for Children. Her articles and reviews have appeared in major Indian publications.