Brahmarakshas & Bhagyarekha: Novel (Paperback) (ISBN-13: 9789371797795)

''Shihabuddin Poyithumkadavu is perhaps one of Malayalam's finest literary talents straddling the changing realities of the twentieth and twenty-fist centuries in Kerala - such is his remarkable imagination that he is no doubt, nothing less than a national treasure of the Malayalam language. His stories sway back and forth between poetry and prose and in the most unpredictable ways; his masterful use of the most startling similes and metaphors to unveil vertigo-inducing sights makes the translation of his fiction a truly daunting task. That is, Shihabuddin draws upon a range of sources, from Sufi thought to his own prodigious ability to conjure up dystopic scenes to lay bare the ugly undersides of greed and bigotry characteristic of these times.

'I congratulate Venugopal Menon heartily for taking up the challenge - it is no small one, I know, from my own experience of translating his work. Like his other fiction, these novellas too are capable of shaking the reader awake from within, of unsettling the moral apathy that arises in us almost like a psychological defence to the extraordinarily violent times that we find ourselves in.'

J. DEVIKA, Historian and Translator