Valli : A Novel [SHORTLISTED FOR THE 2022 JCB PRIZE FOR LITERATURE, AND LONGLISTED FOR THE 2023 NATIONAL TRANSLATION AWARD IN PROSE]

By Sheela Tomy| Jayasree Kalathil

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About the book

High in the Western Ghats in northern Kerala is a land of mist and mystery, of forests and folklore, rich with the culture of its indigenous people, the Adivasis. Its old name was Bayalnad – land of the paddy fields – but it would come to be known as Wayanad.

Its resources attracted outsiders – traders, colonialists, migrants from the lowlands, and eventually, the timber and tourist industries. Exploitation of the forest led to the exploitation and enslavement of its people, and as the forest dwindled, so did the Adivasis’ culture, their way of life, even their language. But these were not changes quietly and willingly accepted; Wayanad became a key centre of direct action and uprising, and a stronghold for the Naxalite movement.

Spanning the time between the 1970s and the present, Valli is a tale of four generations who made this land their home. It is told through a diary that Susan – the daughter of two teachers, Thommichan and Sara, who eloped to Wayanad so that they could live together – leaves for her own daughter, Tessa.

And in telling their story, Valli tells us stories of the land and its people, of interdependence and abuse, repression and resistance, despair and contentment – stories as vast and magical as the forest itself once was.

Pages: 420

Available in: Paperback

Language: English

Sheela Tomy

Sheela Tomy is a novelist, short story writer and scriptwriter. Valli is her debut novel, for which she was awarded the Cherukad Award for Malayalam Literature in 2020. She is also the author of a short story collection, Melquíadesnte Pralayapusthakam (Melquíades’s Book of Floods), published in 2012. Sheela has won several awards for her short stories, including the Abu Dhabi Arangu Award (2007), the Puzha.com Short Story Award (2008), the Doha Sanskriti Award (2012), the Doha Samanwayam Award (2012) and the Kamala Surayya ‘Neermathalam’ Award UAE (2014). Born in Mananthavadi in Wayanad district, Sheela currently resides in Doha, Qatar. Her second novel, Aa Nadiyodu Peru Chodikkaruthu (Do Not Ask the River Her Name), is set to be published later this year.

Jayasree Kalathil

Jayasree Kalathil is the author of The Sackclothman, a children’s book that has been translated into Malayalam, Hindi and Telugu. She shared the JCB Prize for Literature in 2020 with S. Hareesh for her translation of his novel, Moustache. She is a recipient of the Crossword Book Award for Indian Language Translation and the V. Abdulla Memorial Translation Prize. Her translation of Sheela Tomy’s Valli (2022) was shortlisted for the JCB Prize for Literature, the American Literary Translators Association’s National Translation Award in Prose, and the Atta Galatta–Bangalore Literature Festival Book of the Year Award. Originally from Kottakkal in Malappuram district, Kerala, Jayasree currently lives in a small village in the New Forest in England.

Sweeping, filled with fiery passion, Valli is one of the most powerful novels I’ve read in the last few decades. Sheela Tomy has given us a soaring and unforgettable song of the earth, a magnificent and wrenching story of four generations in Wayanad, but also a book shot through with the murmuring, stifled but always resurgent voices of the forest and the land itself. Jayasree Kalathil’s luminescent translation brings this world, fertile in legends, tales and gods, bloodstained and betrayed but enduring, to vivid life. “Valli” can mean vines, or the earth itself, and this beautiful and shattering novel will take you into the heart of the hills and jungles of South India, and leave you transformed, in the manner of books like Richard Powers’ The Overstory and Barbara Kingsolver’s The Poisonwood Bible. There are books you love, and books that change you – Valli was both for me. - Nilanjana S. Roy, author of The Wildings

Valli is the story of Wayanad, in which it is not a piece of land but an ecosystem of social, political and ecological violence. “Valli” in Malayalam means land, plant, young woman and daily wages, and it is intriguing how the novel brilliantly metaphorizes Wayanad as “valli”, weaving the multilayered tales of land, women, forest and the downtrodden to create an amazing forest of allegory. Never before has a work of fiction been so successful in capturing the wholeness of Wayanad, delving into its past and present, characterizing its flora and fauna, illustrating its social complexity and dissecting its political kinetics. Jayasree’s translation is lush and luxuriant, an alluring “valli” on its own merits. - K.R. Meera, author of Hangwoman