Ayussinte Pusthakam

Ayussinte Pusthakam (English: The Book of Life) is a well-known Indian Malayalam language novel by C. V. Balakrishnan.^[1] The novel was adapted into an experimental play by Suveeran.^[2][3] The play received Kerala Sangeeta Nataka Akademi Award of 2008, and participated in several international festivals.

Background

Balakrishnan began writing this novel when he moved to Calcutta in late-1970s. An old edition of the Bible at St. Paul's Cathedral in Calcutta triggered the book in him. It took him three years to complete the novel. Says the author: "All the characters and villages of Christian settlers were in my mind long before I began thinking about writing Ayussinte Pusthakam. The characters are based on people I met during my course as a school teacher in a village in Kasaragod. I wrote Ayussinte Pusthakam at a time when I was going through an emotionally difficult period; my relation with my father was strained and I was feeling very lonely. Ayussinte Pusthakam is about loneliness. The book is also about sin and sadness, written in a style and language that have been judiciously borrowed from The Bible." The protagonist in this novel is Yohannan, and the plot revolves around his ambiguities concerning sexual desire.^[1]

References