On the Far Side of Memory Short Stories of Lalithambika Antharjanam

by Antharjanam, Lalithambika; Devika, J.

• ISBN13: 9780199477784
• ISBN10: 0199477787
• Format: Hardcover
• Copyright: 2018-02-28
• Publisher: Oxford University Press

Author Biography

Lalithambika Antharjanam, ,J. Devika, Associate Professor, Centre for Development Studies

Lalithambika Antharjanam (1909-1989) is widely recognized as one of the first women to win acclaim in the early twentieth century as a writer in modern Malayalam literature. Born in a progressive Brahmin family in south Kerala, she was one of the few Brahmin women who were exposed to modern learning and ways of life, at a time when traditional seclusion of women was the rule in her community. She was initially renowned as a powerful voice which questioned the place of women in the traditional Malayali Brahmin way of life in Kerala, but her critique of modern gender as it was advanced by modernizing social reformism is also a significant part of her work. She published nine volumes of short stories, the short story being the genre which brought her most fame. She won several prestigious awards, and her only novel, Agnisakshi (1976) won the Kendra Sahitya Akademi Award and the Kerala Sahitya Akademi Award.

J. Devika is associate professor at the Centre for Development Studies, Trivandrum, Kerala, and has a doctoral degree in history. She has published several translations---a volume of short stories by Sarah Joseph, The Masculine of Virgin (2012), a novel and a novella by K.R. Meera, Hangwoman (2014) and And Slowly Forgetting that Tree... (2015). She has also written introductions for many translations, including the memoirs of Devaki Nilayangode, Antharjanam: Memoirs of a Namboodiri Woman (2011), Lalithambika Antharjanam's novel Agnisakhi (2015), and Johny Miranda's novella, Requiem for the Living (2013).

Table of Contents

Introduction: A Woman Among the Reformers
1. Life and Death
2. She, the Undying
3. The Sugar-Sweet Kiss
4. Recognition
5. Prasadam
6. Is This Desirable?
7. Realism
8. Great Expectations
9. Legacy
10. At the Edge of the Field
11. Letter from a Woman Writer
12. Cobwebs
13. The Ruined Life
14. The Wooden Cradle
15. Facing the Flames
16. Within the Veil
17. The Signatories
18. Come Back!
19. The Scent of Breast-milk
20. On the Far Side of Memory
21. Sowmini Lodge
22. The Song Without a Songstress
About the Author and the Translator