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‘The body was the only truth she knew. It was the body alone that was left, even as she went beyond the body.’
Journeys form the leitmotif of these astonishing new stories by Ambai. Sometimes culminating in an unconventional love affair, some are extraordinary tales of loyalty and integrity; others touch on the almost fantastic, absurd aspect of Mumbai. Yet others explore the notion of a wholesome self, and its tragic absence at times. These stories are illuminated by vivid and unusual characters: from an eccentric, penurious singer-couple who adopt an ape as their son, to a male prostitute, who is battered by bimbos for not giving ‘full’ satisfaction.
Crucially, some of the stories, like the title one, engage uninhibitedly with a woman’s relationship to her body. For Ambai, feminist par excellence, the sensual body, experienced as a natural landscape changing with age, is at the same time, the only vehicle of life and tool for mapping the external world.
Imprint: India Penguin
Published: Feb/2012
ISBN: 9780143414056
Length : 172 Pages
MRP : ₹250.00
Imprint: Penguin Audio
Published:
ISBN:
Imprint: India Penguin
Published: Feb/2012
ISBN: 9788184756173
Length : 172 Pages
MRP : ₹250.00
‘The body was the only truth she knew. It was the body alone that was left, even as she went beyond the body.’
Journeys form the leitmotif of these astonishing new stories by Ambai. Sometimes culminating in an unconventional love affair, some are extraordinary tales of loyalty and integrity; others touch on the almost fantastic, absurd aspect of Mumbai. Yet others explore the notion of a wholesome self, and its tragic absence at times. These stories are illuminated by vivid and unusual characters: from an eccentric, penurious singer-couple who adopt an ape as their son, to a male prostitute, who is battered by bimbos for not giving ‘full’ satisfaction.
Crucially, some of the stories, like the title one, engage uninhibitedly with a woman’s relationship to her body. For Ambai, feminist par excellence, the sensual body, experienced as a natural landscape changing with age, is at the same time, the only vehicle of life and tool for mapping the external world.
Ambai is the nom de plume of Dr C.S. Lakshmi, a historian and a creative writer in Tamil who writes about love, relationships, quests and journeys in the Tamil region and elsewhere. Her stories have been translated by Lakshmi Holmstrom in two volumes entitled A Purple Sea and In a Forest, a Deer. Ambai was awarded the Lifetime Literary Achievement Award of Tamil Literary Garden, University of Toronto, Canada, for the year 2008.
Lakshmi Holmström is a writer and translator. She has translated short stories, novels and poetry by the major contemporary writers in Tamil. In 2000 she received the Crossword Book Award for her translation of Karukku by Bama; in 2007 she shared the Crossword-Hutch Award for her translation of Ambai s short stories, In a Forest, a Deer; and she received the Iyal Award of the Tamil Literary Garden, Canada, in 2008.
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