MALAYALAM
Short stories
K. K. GOPALAKRISHNAN
ASOKAN CHARUVILINTE KATHAKAL: Current Books, Thrissur-680001. Rs. 350.
ASOKAN CHARUVIL represents the second generation contemporary Malayalam fiction writers. This book is a collection of as many as 79 short stories pertaining to the period 1976-2007. The middle class and the lower middle class — their lives, aspirations, frustrations, et al — and the various dimensions of contemporary society form the core of almost all the stories. The innate goodness of ordinary people and their down-to-earth attitude towards fellowmen and the society at large have been woven into the stories and they are expressed in a language that touches the heart. Politics, tragedies, helplessness that goes with old age, and the travails and the humdrum routine of white-collar employees like clerks are also dealt with by him. The hallmark of Charuvil’s stories is that they appeal primarily to the heart that emotes and resonates to humanity, and only secondarily to the brain that reflects on their message.
Coming as they do from one who is known as a writer with a firm political ideology, Charuvil’s narrations are not absolutely free from that ‘commitment’, although efforts to free his creative impulse from such influence are also noticeable from the point of literary aesthetics. The stories have been grouped rather casually.While some of the pieces stand out for their thematic and narrative endurance, a few are just run-of-the-mill kind.
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