‘The Remnants of Rebellion’: A rare novel about troubling inheritances, shifting tides of history

“We are the sons. Everything belongs to us. The daughter’s daughter is only a distant family member.”

Ponnu Elizabeth Mathew’s debut novel, The Remnants of Rebellion, charges headlong into the question of inheritance. Aleyamma, separated from her grandfather at age eight, returns to his hometown for his funeral and finds herself at the centre of a storm involving a house he had lived in once, briefly, for a tumultuous year marked by love, loss, and violence. Appacha’s will bequeaths the house in Puthuloor, now a homestay run by his youngest son, to his “artist granddaughter”, unconcerned with the commerce of property, unmindful of the possibility of turning her bequest into a thriving business. Grieving, unmoored, carrying only the vestiges of the life she had left behind in Chennai, Aleyamma finds herself at Estate House, a sprawling, 15-room house on a hill, suddenly in charge of her life in a way she has never been before.

In re-tracing the stories of Aleyamma and her grandfather, Eesho, the narrative constructs a rich, nuanced history of the land beloved of both. Embedded within the narrative are many rebellions – political and personal. It grapples fiercely with the stronghold of caste and class in modern-day, supposedly liberal communities and...

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