As he did in the award-winning One Part Woman, in his newest novel,
The Story of a Goat, Perumal Murugan explores a side of India that is
rarely considered in the West: the rural lives of the country's farming
community. He paints a bucolic yet sometimes menacing portrait, showing
movingly how danger and deception can threaten the lives of the weakest
through the story of a helpless young animal lost in a world it naively
misunderstands.
As the novel opens, a farmer in Tamil Nadu is watching the sun set over
his village one quiet evening when a mysterious stranger, a giant man
who seems more than human, appears on the horizon. He offers the farmer
a black goat kid who is the runt of the litter, surely too frail to
survive. The farmer and his wife take care of the young she-goat, whom
they name Poonachi, and soon the little goat is bounding with joy and
growing at a rate they think miraculous for such a small animal.
Intoxicating passages from the goat's perspective offer a bawdy and
earthy view of what it means to be an animal and a refreshing portrayal
of the natural world. But Poonachi's life is not destined to be a rural
idyll - dangers can lurk around every corner, and may sometimes come
from surprising places, including a government that is supposed to
protect the weak and needy. Is this little goat too humble a creature to
survive such a hostile world?
With allegorical resonance for contemporary society and examining
hierarchies of caste and color, The Story of the Goat is a provocative
but heartwarming fable from a world-class storyteller who is finally
achieving recognition outside his home country.
