‘Bride in the Hills’: Kannada writer Kuvempu’s novel depicts life under the ruthless regime of caste
The Kannada novel, published in 1967, has been translated into English by Vanamala Viswanatha.
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Bride in the Hills is Vanamala Viswanatha’s brilliant translation of Malegallali Madumagalu, which is considered one of the greatest novels of Kannada literature, by one of Karnataka’s best-loved writers, Kuvempu. The epic novel was written in 1967 and has been translated into English once before and published by Rashtrakavi Kuvempu Pratisthana. This evocative translation by Vanamala VIswanatha reintroduces Kuvempu to a wider English-speaking audience and will hopefully enable a larger conversation about the importance of Kuvempu in both the national and the global context.
The nature of caste
An important strand of the complex and multilayered narrative of the novel appears in the three love stories, one between Gutthi and Thimmi from the Holeya caste, another, between Aita and Pinchalu from the Tulu-speaking Billava caste, and Chinnamma and Mukundaya from the Gowda caste. These three love stories, set as they are in the breathtakingly beautiful, though deeply feudal Malnad region, dramatise the barriers love has to cross – social, feudal, psychological, patriarchal – before the couples are united.
The novel apart from evoking the breathtaking beauty of the Malenadu region also leaves etched in the mind’s eye, people who become a familiar part of your world. Everyone will have a favourite in this novel, peopled...
