Born in 1966, Perumal Murugan is an Indian writer and has been a professor of Tamil at the Government Arts College in Salem and Namakkal. He has authored twelve novels and a collection of short stories and poems comprising six collections each.
Quite a number of novels have been translated into English. ‘ Seasons of the Palm’ was short-listed for the Kiriyama Prize in 2005( Last awarded in 2008, the Kiriyama Prize was an international literary award accorded to works about Pacific Rim and South Asia). In 2017, the English translation of Murugan’s novel Madhorubhagan, or One Part Woman, by Aniruddha Vasudevan, won the Sahitya Akademi’s Translation Prize. The book was also in the ‘ Translated Literature’ category for the 2018 National Book Award. Again he was longlisted for, ‘ The Story of a Goat’. In 2023, the English translation of Murugan’s novel ‘ Pukkuli’ or ‘Pyre’ by Aniruddhan Vasudevan was long-listed for the International Booker Prize 2023. ‘ Fire Bird’ ( translated by Janani Kannan) is shortlisted for the JCB Prize for Literature.
Known for chronicling the ordinary, Murugan lives in a small, agricultural town in the western region of Southern India. As Gandhi believed the soul of India lies in villages, Murugan’s characters are rural in color living in small, remote towns. He writes in Tamil. It comes as a contrast to Indian writers writing in English whose characters are mostly urban citizens. Brutal in description and frank in tone, he scrupulously depicts the trees, seasons, people and even animals. His intimacy with the pastoral is quite enviable.
Embroiled in controversies, in 2015, Murugan declared himself ‘ dead ‘. He went on a literary exile. He was resurrected as a writer by the judgement delivered by the Madras High Court in 2016: ‘ Let the author be resurrected to what he is best at. Write.’
On the global stage, the appetite for Murugan’s work has only grown. The fact that two works were launched within a month ( Fire Bird and Sandalwood Soaps and Other Stories) points to the hankering for a local, simple tone giving away the earthy smell that the readers find immersive.