Legends of Khasak

English version of the famous Malayalm novel 'Khasakkinte Ithihasam' by O.V. Vijayan
Penguin Books India
Pages: 208 Paperback
List Price: $14.95. Used and new available from $5.17
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Malayalam Edition Price INR 75
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This is the much-acclaimed first novel by O. V. Vijayan, one of Kerala's greatest writers. The novel first published in 1969 and the subsequent editions came throughout the years. It took almost 19 years for Vijayan to complete the novel.

A restlessness born of guilt and despair leads Ravi to embark on a journey that ends in the remote village of Khasak in the picturesque Palghat countryside. A land from the past, potent with dreams and legends, enfolds the traveller in a powerful and unsettling embrace.

Ravi is bewitched and entranced as everything around him - the villagers, their children whom he teaches in a makeshift school, the elders who see him as a threat; the toddy-tappers, the shamans - takes on the wuality of myth. And then reality, painful and threatening, begins to intrude on the sojourner's resting place and Ravi begins to understand that there is no escape from the relentless dictates of karma.

Through Khasak, Vijayan was creating a new literary language in Malayalam. He was not just telling a story. He took the characters out of their commonness and wrapped them with his magical literary sense. The novel goes through a whirlpool of fantasy, myths and history. In other words, the novel took energy from its own soil and so it became something unique.

(courtesy: amazon.com)