From the author of One Part Woman and The Story of a Goat, both
longlisted for the National Book Award for Translation, comes a poignant
and startling novel about love, caste, and intolerance
Profiled in both the New Yorker and the New York Times, Perumal
Murugan is one of India's highest selling and most respected literary
writers, and Pyre is perhaps his most beloved work. Saroja and
Kumaresan are young and in love. After meeting in a small southern
Indian town where Kumaresan works at a soda bottling shop, they quickly
marry before returning to Kumaresan's family village, where they hope to
build a happy life together. But they are harboring a terrible secret:
Saroja is from a different caste than Kumaresan, and if the villagers
find out, they will both be in grave danger. Faced with venom from her
mother-in-law and questions from her new neighbors, Saroja tries to
adjust to a new lonely and uncomfortable life, while Kumaresan struggles
to scrape together enough money for them to start over somewhere new.
Will their love keep them safe in a world filled with thorns? In
evocative prose, Perumal Murugan masterfully conjures a moving tale of
innocent young love pitted against chilling violence.
