‘Tamil: The Best Stories of Our Times’: Tamil modernity, a field of tensions between past and future

In Tamil: The Best Stories of Our Times, editor and scholar Perundevi brings together 22 short stories by some of the most acclaimed voices in contemporary Tamil literature, including Jeyamohan, Perumal Murugan, Salma, and Imayam. The stories carry the sediment of caste, class, gender, and postcolonial legacies in their syntax, their silences, and their small rebellions.

The editor’s introduction traces the Tamil short story’s genealogy from its Manikodi-era roots in the 1930s to the hyper-realistic, genre-bending work of the present day. She invokes Pudumaippithan’s idea of suchumangal – the “subtler aspects of life” –and sets the tone for the stories to follow. What I’ve always liked about Tamil fiction is how they’re not outright wrapped in moral clarity and, instead, find their meaning in the more minor contradictions of society, family, and life. They refuse to be indulgent character studies and instead are very matter-of-fact in asking the numerous, seemingly heavy-handed questions they do. How does a woman’s worth become entangled in her womb? How is a tailor’s pride interwoven with a worn-down sewing machine? More importantly, they all seem to ask the same question of how identity – ethnic, religious, and gendered – splinters in the echo chamber of diaspora and memory.

Confronting social forces

The variety of...

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