Kerala - Thiruvananthapuram   

Akademi chief spells out his priorities

Staff Reporter

`Underprivileged should benefit from the new initiative'

Thiruvananthapuram: The Kerala Sahitya Akademi would bring marginalised sections of society closer to the world of books, its new president M. Mukundan said here on Saturday.

Speaking at a "Meet the Writer" programme hosted by the Press Club here, said the Malayalam writer said that underprivileged sections of society and those on its fringes, even persons in jail, should benefit from the new initiative.

The Akademi should not be the preserve of intellectuals and writers alone. It had several social roles to perform, including taking literature to the masses. Writers should visit schools and introduce children to good literature. The habit of reading should not be allowed to wilt away. The Akademi would identify good writers among the expatriate Malayalis and help them publish their works. Mukundan said there were a surprising number of unknown but highly talented writers among Gulf Malayalis. Malayalam writing was flourishing even in the far corners of the Western world. There was good writing talent among convicts.

On the global stage, Malayali writers were relatively unknown. There were only a handful of people who could professionally translate a book from Malayalam to English preserving its original character. Writers like Gabriel Garcia Marquez used highly skilled professional translators for converting his original works from Spanish to English and other languages. Kerala clearly lacked such highly skilled translators.

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