TITLE: THE GOAT THIEF
AUTHOR: PERUMAL MURUGAN
GENRE: SHORT STORIES (TRANSLATED BY N. KALYAN RAMAN)
BLURB
Perumal Murugan is one of the best Indian writers today. He trains his unsentimental eye on men and women who live in the margins of our society. He tells their stories with deep sympathy and calm clarity. A lonely night watchman falls in love with the ghost of a rape victim. A terrified young goat thief finds himself surrounded by a mob baying for his blood. An old peasant exhausted by a lifetime of labour is consumed by jealousy and driven to an act of total destruction. Set in the arid kongu landscape of rural Tamil Nadu, these tales illuminate the extraordinary acts that make up everyday life.
MY REVIEW
“The Goat Thief” is a collection of ten translated short stories (originally written in the Tamil language) set up in the outskirts of Tamil Nadu (A state in India). All plots are based on ordinary people’s day-to-day life. A reader may connect with each tale in one way or the other since it mostly deals with raw human emotions. The book received the title from a short story in it.
From each story, a keen reader could extract the essence of some relevant social issues; that arises due to mere human nature and they’re over obsession towards something irrelevant. The author has well-portrayed intricacies of human emotions and mental struggles.
Subtleness in storytelling included more intriguing factors to the stories. I was astonished by each tale that the author had weaved from trifle incidents in one’s life. Could you barely imagine an enthralling tale based on human faeces!!!. If you can‘t, then devour this book. Some stories have hypothetical endings, and one can expect the unexpected.
A couple of stories portrays the same context and content, which I found a bit boring and repetitive. Readers can get an outlook of Tamil Nadu’s landscape, culture and their food as well. It’s an easy read and if you are fascinated by light-hearted stories, then I would recommend this.
MY RATING
4 stars out of 5 stars
You can buy the book here.
