Sociology Through Literature

This book presents a comprehensive study of nearly 100 of Kaaroor’s short stories. Kaaroor Neelakanta Pillai is one among the Big Six of the ‘new wave’ in Malayalam literature which began in the mid-1940s. The Big Six and their immediate followers wrote about the common man, peasants, pavement-dwellers, fishermen, rickshaw-pullers, underpaid school teachers — their lives, aspirations and vulnerabilities. By treating Kaaroor’s stories as case studies, the book takes a sociological approach to understanding the representation of a wide array of themes: romantic overtones, erotic pursuits, marital episodes, issues of family, lives of children, behavioural patterns, shades of greed, the idea of spirituality and politics in Malayalam literature.

With its annotated transcreation and detailed commentary, this book brings Kaaroor’s works to the general reader, and will be useful to scholars and researchers of South Asian literature, English literature, linguistics, cultural studies, besides those interested in Malayalam literature and the Malayali/Indian diaspora across the world.