Newly weds Kumaresan and Saroja elope to his rural village in Tamil Nadu. Despite having lived her life in the city and hailing from a different caste, Saroja blindly follows Kumaresan to his village hoping to build a new life with him. Set in rural Tamil Nadu, Pyre is about inter caste marriages and its ramifications.

Seeing Pyre on the International Booker Prize long list got me excited, but sadly, this was a miss for me.
I felt this wasn't Murugan's best work. The book could have been much more intense mainly because of the issue it handles. Inter caste marriage is a serious issue in India and its repercussions, grievous. Severe intolerance taint inter caste marriages in rural India, with chilling coverages of honour killings often highlighting the local news channels.

But I felt the author’s treatment of the issue was rather shallow and the simplistic writing, which I often appreciate, faltered at places mainly due to repetition. I can't say if some things were lost in translation.

The characters felt under developed and lacked nuances the story required - their naivete coming across annoying at times. I wanted to know more about them, but was sadly left wanting.
Using repetitions in writing can be effective if done in the right manner and in the right amount. But this book suffers from its over usage, dragging the story making it a drab read.

The opening chapters and the ending chapters, however, are the redeeming parts of the book. While Murugan brings to light the horrors of honour killings and caste-based intolerance in India, he also explores a closed community’s prejudice against an outsider, as Saroja doesn’t find a single soul to befriend apart from her husband. Murugan’s take on toxic relationships between mothers and daughters- in-law was noticeable. The book had great potential, but despite its tragic theme, Pyre unfortunately fizzled out as an underwhelming read for me.

2 1/2 stars

Thank you @netgalley for the ARC

'perhaps they could live elsewhere. and their land here? what would he do about it? he could leave it all for amma to manage and just go away, taking saroja with him. but what if these controls and strictures followed them wherever they went in the world?' — pyre, perumal murugan 🥀

out of all the ways lovers are robbed of their happy endings, i think societal constructs has got to be the cruelest and hardest to read. despite it's simple writing style, Perumal Murugan's Pyre (translated from tamil to english by Aniruddhan Vasudevan) was just as emotionally stimulating and disturbing as you'd expect an inter-caste love story set in a south indian village to be. it starts off with hope and softcore love, turns to rage and worry, goes back to hope, and then inevitably ends with tears of horror.

with my radar on indian fiction being super low, i have taken this smol reading resolution that I'll read at least one book by an indian author every month. and Pyre just ended up being the first. phew, murugan was goood!

This is my first Perumal Murugan and I am really glad this was translated. The story explores the impacts of the caste system and an inter-caste marriage. I definitely learned a lot whilst reading this engaging novel.

Set in 1980's India, this book chronicles of events which are relevant till date. The tale unfurls with an air of tension where Kumaresan brings his newly wedded bride, Saroja to his village after a hasty marriage, which is enough to leave the readers with a bated breathe. It is pretty comprehensible even superficially, that the caste based tension in Kumaresan's village is pretty intense and as we delve further into the plot we witness the problem is deep rooted.

Saroja is scathed from the very minute she sets her foot in the village. Kumaresan, who is very devoted to his wife, had no idea that the people he had called family could turn their back on him instantaneously just because he had married someone from the other caste. The young couple was determined to trudge through all the hardships to build a home but they had no idea what was waiting for them. The abuse against the couple multiplies with each day and anchored them with immense trauma.

The author does a great job in tension building and will leave you on tenterhooks. And the most harrowing part was the ending as it doesn't give the readers a closure. It was so horrifying that a chill ran down my spine and I couldn't think for a few minutes. It filled me with grief and anger that this is not just mere fiction but a reality wrapped up in fiction.

Pyre reminds me of a Jane Austen quote, "To love is to burn, to be on fire." I'm sure Austen must've intended to indicate the passion in love but does it not hold very true for Saroja, who was burnt everyday, little by little just because she had committed the sin of love?

Recommending this to anyone who wants to read something short and powerful.

Such an impactful novel. This is my first Perumal Murugan and I am grateful this was translated. This explores the intricacies and the impacts of the caste system and an inter-caste marriage. It forces you to think and I imagine it will force many people, especially in the diaspora who are "caste-blind" to really think about how caste functions and continues to function in the rise of the Hindu right. This is a profound work. While I don't think it is my place to comment on it as a caste privileged person, I believe it is important to read for anyone.

Perumal Murugan grew up in a family of farmers in Tamil Nadu. Internationally, he is known widely for One Part Woman, which was longlisted for the inaugural National Book Award for Translation. When the book was first published in India, he was attacked, threatened, and forced to write an apology by a caste-sensitive and religiously fanatic mob. In the aftermath of this violence, he announced to the world: “Perumal Murugan, the writer, is dead.” After some time passed, although the justice system in India upheld his right to write, he continued to state, “I am fearful of writing about humans.” Later, he wrote The Story of a Goat, an Orwellian parable of female trauma written from the perspective of a female goat. While beautifully executed and rendered into fluid English by N. Kalyan Raman, there was a missing facet to the narrative that could only have been layered in with varied gender-related and hierarchy-driven intersectional human behaviors.

In Pyre, Murugan returns to the human world with prose so sparsely translated that it hits hard like a sledgehammer. Translator Aniruddhan Vasudevan’s style ranges from lyrical to thrilling, but the simplicity of the prose never veers from the equally stark, rural surroundings described in the book. In his note, Vasudevan proclaims: “This is a novel about caste and the resilient force that it is, but it is also about how strangely vulnerable caste and its guardians seem to feel in the face of love . . .”


Belonging to different castes, Kumaresan and Saroja is a traumatized married couple hounded by Kumaresan’s village-folk and family. Kumaresan’s widowed mother welcomes Saroja home by belting out an unsettling funeral dirge. The other men and women around the husband and wife take pleasure in comparing Saroja to food, animals, witches. “She seemed like a lush crop of corn—perhaps a little withered and dull right now, but easily refreshed with just a drop of rain”; “Such a rare piece of sweet jaggery!”; “But he has unleashed a cat upon us”; “Ride a double bullock cart” (referring to Kumaresan’s apparent inevitable cheating.) And these appear in just the first four chapters of the novel.

Whenever women talk in the novel, they display an inexplicable tendency to shove their own kind out of the conversation, focusing on how men are the sole affected victims of inter-caste marriages. There’s a particularly strong inclination in their language to blame the woman, delineating Murugan’s apparent thesis of caste being a socio-patriarchal construct. It fails the Bechdel rather spectacularly and the sleight of hand in narrating it is less subtle than is typical of Murugan. Caste is clearly something he is inordinately sensitive about, and for good reason.

The great Dr. Ambedkar saw caste as a restrictive, confined social interaction goaded along by inter-religious dogma, where the ultimate goal was a perfected structural breeding program. There is a matching frenzy in the xenophobia expressed by the village citizens, which eventually escalates to violent oppression.

Kumaresan and Saroja are not star-crossed lovers. The term “star-crossed” is indicative of an equal, universal fate, which is denied Saroja in this story. Kumaresan, too, eventually fails to rise to her expectations. He is nothing like the knight she had previously envisioned him to be. Battered by the relentless nagging and ostracizing of his village elders, he begins to doubt himself and his ability to lead Saroja to the conflict-free, happy life he’d promised her. Engrossed in starting his own soda-bottle business, he extricates himself from Saroja’s trauma altogether. She is slapped, shoved, insulted, shunned. All we see from Kumaresan in response is the instruction for her to remain voiceless.

When the issue of their marriage eventually reaches the political strata of their village, we see how intertwined political ideology is with propagating modern caste norms. It becomes impossible to separate the language of those in power from the language of those who are consequently oppressed. The couple is so left out, so relegated to subaltern spheres, it is a monumental task to distinguish between cruelty, callousness, and cold-hearted calculation. In a similarly twisted trick of the times, Saroja eventually realizes she is pregnant—news that brings her more trauma. Now fearing for her life—stories of ‘honor killings’ prevalent enough in pastoral parts of the country—we are left with an undecided fate for her, urging us to come to our own conclusions as to the end of Murugan’s story. It is disheartening to leave Kumaresan and Saroja there; it is equally thought-provoking to lead the reader to learn the biases of their own expectations. Therein lies the simple brilliance of Murugan’s story: he does not seem to deal in platitudes; in his stories, the responsibility of inferring the current state of the populace is left entirely to the reader.


While not exactly fulfilling a line of thought the reader assumes the plot is leading to, Murugan nevertheless has powerful imagery to help us facilitate an approximation of our own conclusions. Much more can be discussed about the beautiful natural description that sets the atmosphere of the book. For those uninitiated to Murugan’s writing, the ecology can sometimes take over the metaphors in what this reviewer sees as a satisfyingly meaningful way. “The path ahead of her was strewn with long, slithering white snakes whose heads or tails she could not discern,” Saroja proclaims in the beginning of the book, hauntingly echoing and setting the tone for the rest of the book, where caste acts as a Medusa-esque enemy, impossible to behead in its entirety.

As much as it is a privilege to have Murugan’s commentary on caste with us today, maybe we would be better off to take it as warning. After all, Murugan’s intention may only be to make us think. How wonderful would it be to take it as a call to action.

Perumal Murugan’s writings are always embedded in reality, showing a mirror to the society that is rooted in age-old casteism.

Set in a small village in India, it is the story of a couple with an intercaste marriage and the resulting furor and sheer savagery. Although this is not an easy read, I would definitely recommend it.

DNF at 56%. I really liked Perumal Murugan's Poonachi: Or the Story of a Black Goat so it is with regret I can't say the same for Pyre. With the title and the setting, I wondered whether it was based on the practice of sati. Based in Tamil Nadu, India, it's about a pair of young lovers Kumaresan and Saroja who have eloped in secret from Tholur to Kumaresan's rural village of Kattuppati. The villagers, including Kumaresan's mother Marayi and his relatives, cannot accept Saroja because she is of another caste.

Pyre is translated from Tamil by Aniruddhan Vasudevan, the story and its telling is straightforward. I suspect some of my ill feeling is misplaced toward Kumaresan because I can't believe how naïve he was about the importance of caste differences and how he utterly failed to protect Saroja. Of course the real culprit here is bigotry, hate, misogyny, intolerance. Some reviewers have pointed out the internalized misogyny exhibited by the female villagers, it is indeed in full ugly display. All this is hurtling toward a gruesome violent ending. Casteism is an important issue to highlight, I personally just wasn't getting much out of this story in fictional form and decided to bail. Further nonfiction reading about this topic could include the powerful writings of Dr Ambedkar and his influential views on the abolition of the caste system in India.

Thanks to Grove Atlantic and Netgalley for providing a digital ARC in exchange for an honest review.

A short novel that talks about so many things! I know there will be some readers who will be unfamiliar with the context of this novel, and it's a bit difficult, I agree, for many of us to wrap our heads around the poverty and the dire circumstances of the lives of these characters. But this is set in an earlier time, and in a place that is completely rural and poverty-ridden.

The caste system has always been the bane of Indian society, and this novel underlines IN RED how important caste is, especially in rural India. Many believe that it's all in the past now, but the caste system is alive and well in many rural parts of the country still.

The story is about Kumaresan and Saroja who elope and get married and come to live in Kumaresan's native village. It is a rude shock to Saroja, since she had always lived in a bigger town and is used to its amenities, whereas this is a completely rural and underdeveloped village, without even electricity or running water.

To add to the horror, her mother-in-law (MIL)and the rest of the villagers taunt her with their horrible jibes, accusations and insults and even Kumaresan is unable to escape from their ire for bringing home a wife that does not belong to their caste.

Saroja is in hell, because Kumaresan leaves her alone in their thatched hut with her terrible mother-in-law, and there is nothing to do all day except sit under a tree and wait for Kumaresan to return. All day long, her MIL laments and curses her for bringing shame and ruin to their family.

Kumaresan reassures her that when he makes some money and they can afford a better home, this will all go away and their lives will be better. He is confident that his grandparents and uncles will welcome them and treat them well, but he is treated like a pariah by them as well.

The village council bans them from interacting with any of the other villagers and attending any event held by them. Saroja then discovers that she is pregnant, and Kumaresan is certain that once the baby is born, it will melt everyone's hearts and they will all come around.

One day when Kumaresan goes to work, she overhears a plan by the villagers to kill her and make it appear that she committed suicide. Fearing for her life, she hides in a thicket of bushes, but they soon discover that she is there, and they decide to set fire to that dry bush and turn it into her pyre. Will she pay the ultimate price for her 'sin' of marrying outside her caste, or will she somehow be saved?

This novel is less than 200 pages, but it addresses so many things that are wrong with society. First and foremost is the 'sin' of marrying outside one's caste. Even death is considered preferable to this! Honour killings still happen in this day and age in some places because of this.

The language used against Saroja and the crude accusations are enough to make your ears burn, and yet she tolerates all of it because she loves Kumaresan and is now married to him. There are times when she can't take it anymore-this constant harassment all day by her MIL and the villagers, and she asks Kumaresan to take her back to her home. Towards the end of the book, she discovers that even her father and brother (her only family) who used to dote on her, have abandoned her since she eloped with Kumaresan.

The abject poverty of rural farmers, the divide between the rich and the poor, the evident difference in the attitudes of town dwellers and village folk, the cruelty of humans and their hatred towards people who are different from themselves, the fear of what people will say, judgment, prejudice, hypocrisy, superficial familial love, women being cruel to other women, the sheer insanity of appeasing society at the cost of a human's life--these and other issues are addressed in every few sentences of the book, there for the reader to peel away layer by layer.

This is a translated work, and many of the words from the original Tamil have been retained here, so readers who are unfamiliar with the Tamil language will need to refer to the glossary at the back of the book. There are also certain terms and words in each language that is exclusive to the language, they have their subtle nuances, and often that gets lost in translation, so some expressions may seem odd to the reader, though this is in no way a shortcoming on the part of the translator.

There are two timelines, if you will, one being in the present moment, and the other is the story of how Saroja and Kumaresan met and fell in love and all that transpired before they came to the village. This tends to get confusing at times because many times I was not aware that the timeline had switched until a little way into the chapter.

The author has created the characters as they exist in real life. Kumaresan is a young man who is bound by duty and his responsibility towards his widowed mother, but he also loves Saroja truly and is willing to fight for her. This is a struggle that tears apart many men in Indian society (or used to, at least) who marry someone without their parents' consent.

Saroja is a young and innocent motherless girl, doted on by her father and brother, and used to a comfortable life, even if they are not wealthy. Love makes her lose all reason, and nothing can prepare her for the harsh cruelty and rough conditions of living on a rock in a village far from civilisation. She is torn between her love for Kumaresan and the desire to go back to her home where she was well-fed and taken care of.

Kumaresan's mother, Marayi's character is the essence of every MIL and mother who is disgruntled about a million things in life! She has been alone since the age of 20, when her husband died, leaving her alone with a son. She has struggled and lived on her own, never remarried (their caste does not allow it) and worked hard and held her head up high. Now that Kumaresan has gone and married outside his caste and without her consent, she feels a great sense of betrayal and shame at what he has done.

She considers it a failure on her part that she didn't bring him up better, else he would never have done something to break his mother's heart and shame her. All her life has been in vain, because her only hope, her only son, has gone and got them ostracised and made her hang her head in shame.

A simple tale, with realistic characters and many topics to think about and reflect upon, this is a little novel that packs a big punch!

Thanks to Netgalley, Grove Atlantic and the author for providing me with a review copy of this digital ARC in exchange for my honest review.

4.5/5 rounded up.

At the onset of the novel we are introduced to Saroja and Kumaresan , a young newly married couple who have recently eloped and are travelling to Kumaresan’s native village in hopes of starting a new life together. Kumaresan is aware that their inter-caste marriage will raise eyebrows and create a stir. He decides to keep the fact that Saroja does not belong to the same caste a secret until the fuss dies down and incorrectly assumes that in time things will settle down and Saroja will be accepted in his fold.

His mother Marayi , having raised her son alone after being widowed at a young age is horrified at their arrival and does not mince her words in condemning their actions , Saroja bearing the brunt of most of the venom she spouts. Her anger is propelled not only by missing out on being able to choose a “suitable” daughter-in-law who would come with a dowry but also the fact that her family and fellow villagers would react adversely and her status in their community would be affected by her son's actions.

While Kumaresan goes about in an effort set up his own soda bottle business in the vicinity, Saroja spends her days alone. Constantly berated by her mother-in- law and taunted by relatives and neighbors, she stays hidden in her thatched roofed hut ,waiting for her husband to return at the end of the day . Alone with her thoughts she reminisces about her family and how she met and fell in love with Kumaresan while also pondering over their current situation . When the villagers finally ex-communicate the family till the upcoming religious festivals are over and Kumaresan and Saroja receive no support from Kumaresan’s relatives , Kumaresan starts to break under the pressure of economic uncertainty and being ostracized by his community.He starts drinking and Saroja’s fears for their future are compounded. When Kumaresan finally finds a location for his business in location at a distance from their village, Saroja hopes that they could leave and settle down somewhere people would be more accepting of her and of them as a couple. The situation, with mounting conflict and tension with the villagers, eventually spins out of control and the climax leaves Saroja’s fate hanging in the balance.

Vivid descriptions of the harsh terrain and landscapes add to the atmosphere of the novel. While the descriptions of the rituals , customs and traditions of the region are beautifully penned throughout the narrative , the darker side of societal structure and practices in terms of discrimination and intolerance are also exposed as the story progresses. When Saroja and Kumaresan fall in love they remain hopeful that their love can withstand all resistance and can bring about change in the way society perceives such relationships that defy age old social norms. Their naïveté and misplaced hopefulness , mostly Kumaresan’s inability to comprehend the possible dangers they could face when the entire community and his family stands against them is in stark contrast to the animosity displayed by his family and fellow villagers. The beauty of Perumal Murugan’s Pyre (translated brilliantly by Aniruddhan Vasudevan) lies in the simplicity with which the thoughts and emotions of these characters are expressed.

This is not a happy or light read. Dealing with a sensitive social issue, it is harsh and rooted in reality .It remains unfortunate that even in today’s world there are instances of unfiltered hatred, discrimination and violence based on the age old caste system and family ‘status’ . Compelling and powerful, Perumal Murugan’s Pyre evokes strong emotions and paints a harsh picture of the dark side of human nature and the ill –effects of certain social beliefs and practices that promote hatred,
discrimination and violence. This is my first Perumal Murugan novel and I look forward to reading more of his work.

Thanks to NetGalley and Grove Atlantic for providing a digital review copy in exchange for an honest review.

Stupidity, small-mindedness, insularity, misogyny, bigotry and violence are all on display in this story of two people from different castes marrying and moving to the Tamil Nadu rural village of the husband.

Saroja and Kumaresan fall for each other after weeks of watching the other, secretlymarry then travel to his village to live together. He believes, naively, that she will be accepted by his widowed mother, who had long wanted to find him a wife, and by his village.

Saroja is struck repeatedly by the differences between what she is accustomed to and what life is like in the village. Marayi, Kumaresan’s infuriated mother, rages at him, and is unremittingly cruel to Saroja, while Kumaresan’s relatives and his village decide to cut contact with him, and he takes to drinking. Things falls apart not long after, with tragic rapidity.

The text lays out this story fairly simply, with the intolerances and close-minded behaviours of Marayi and the villagers dominating the increasingly tense story, while Saroja keeps her head down, outwardly being the obedient, quiet wife, as she’s expected to be, never fighting back or disputing the wrongness of the harmful and hate-filled spewing of those around her. Inwardly, we’re shown her increasing anger, terror and pain from her isolation in the village and the growing menace from the people around her, as they focus on Kumarasen’s independent decision to marry a girl without his family’s sanction and who is outside their caste.

A pretty fast read, this story had me sick with fear for Saroja, and wondering how Kumarasen could have so naively brought her to what he surely should have realized would be a miserable and potentially very dangerous situation, as caste-based violence and misogyny-based violence are prevalent. The author’s buildup of tension and fear were great, and terrible as the story’s outcome is, it felt sadly real.

Thank you to Netgalley and to Grove Atlantic for this ARC in exchange for my review.

A tragic love story. Kumaresan and Saroja fall in love and defy the restrictions of their society by marrying,. They are of different castes and equally importantly, Saroja is unprepared for life in a village. Kumaresan's mother Marayi is hateful, just hateful to her new daughter in law. Everything Kumaresan does seems to fall apart. Saroja is pregnant and struggling with isolation, abuse, and a husband who is not the man she married. This is a tough read in spots and sadly, I understand, not unrealistic. Thanks to Netgalley for the ARC. For fans of world literature.

This is classic Perumal Murugan. A story filled with so much texture, color, and imagery. The translation keeps us in thrall of the master's prose, which is how it should be. If some aspects of the original language remain untranslatable, this isn't due to any lack on the translator's part but because there's no such thing as a perfect translation. PLEASE NOTE: we will be publishing a full book review on Desi Books (https://desibooks.co) in early-March.

A love story hindered by the strict caste system of India. A work in translation to English. This story shines in the daily details.

Pyre is the story of a love-struck couple in the villages of India – Saroja and Kumarasen. They come to the groom’s village to settle after secretly getting married. But they are hiding a dangerous truth – that their marriage is an inter-caste marriage.

Kumarasen is confident in his belief that his mother and their relatives will understand their love for each other and he also believes that after some initial gossip, the villagers will also accept them into their community.
Alas, all is not well and life doesn’t always turn out how we believe it too.

The writing of the story is so powerful that I was terrified for the innocent and helpless newlyweds. Perumal Murugan paints a very grim, and disturbing picture through this revenge story of the villagers. What was surprising was the indifference and lack of understanding shown by the groom’s mother and closest family. Even the bride’s parents did not seem too bothered about their daughter.

The book paints a very disheartening but painful reality of rural India. Casteism - the brutality, violence, and emotions of the people involved could not have been portrayed better through any other fictional story. My heart went out to Saroja but I was equally heartbroken for the honest and hard-working Kumarasen. And the whole village set-up and the mentality of villagers have been captured perfectly.

I wish the story was longer.

I highly recommend this for readers who want to read beautifully and powerfully written Indian stories.

Kumaresan and Saroja are a young couple, deeply in love with each other. They elope and get married and hope that their love would be enough to brave the storm that this “inter-caste” marriage would conjure. Kumaresan takes Saroja to his village, where he has a hut atop a rock and and he wishes to turn his barren house and life into a lush green pasture. His mother absolutely detests Saroja; but he feels that she would eventually come around. But would his simplicity and trust be rewarded with the acceptance of his marriage or would his naivety cost him dearly and his dreams would be engulfed in the pyre of hatred.

The story on the surface is a tale of innocent love. The couple fall in love in a sweet manner in typical old school fashion. There are stolen glances and and sweet concern for each other. When the time comes to make a decision, they choose to get married against everyone’s wishes rather than separate from each other. But as the book progresses, it becomes evident that on a deeper level, this book is a commentary on caste issues plaguing the Indian society. Marrying a girl of another caste becomes such a sin for Kumaresan that his family becomes “impure” to even draw water from the village well. I am yet to decide whether I am more upset by the cruelty of the society or by Kumar’s naive faith in goodness of people when he knows the dynamics of the society he lives in.

At the start of the book, the reader can sense a foreboding that this is not going to end well. The feeling of dread that is built up is taken to a perfect crescendo by the powerful writing of Murugan. The translation is adequate, there is no way the vernacular nuances can be captured by the translator. The writer can get poetic when describing soft emotions such as love, he can get caustic in equal measure when describing hatred. This lets the book be a love story as well as a social commentary. The climax will invoke a bone chilling fear inside the readers and send them into an abyss for a while.

This is not a review, as I did not finish. I'm just sharing my thoughts.

Seems like an unpopular opinion, but this book didn't interest me.

It started well, I really liked the writing style but then it got painfully slow and repetitive. Plus, I didn't feel anything for the couple, I mean their feelings for each other, the bonding/chemistry etc, and their conversation didn't help.

This deceptively simple little book has really done my head in. I read this right after Abir Mukherjee's [book:A Rising Man|25686321] (set in 1919, against the backdrop of regressive policies and terrible tragedies like the Jallianwala Bagh massacre.)

While reading Pyre, I could not help wondering when this was set and aching for it to be historical, to be in the past -- but I know, of course, that caste is very much an issue today, in the now. This heartbreaking story is reality outside of my city-dwelling, cosmopolitan bubble.

Saroja and Kumaresan as lovers who dare to hope, try to find acceptance in his village after eloping from a small town. Their arrival has unpredicated consequences and quickly shows them how cruel and small-minded my compatriots can be.

Murugan sketches out in clean, distinct lines how the individual is subservient to the collective, the ritual is superior to the right to choose, and the insular are slaves to tradition. Frogs in a well, indeed.

The end of this book rattled me.

I received this ARC for free from netgalley for an honest review. It's a beautiful translation of a very moving story.

India somehow always remains an enigma for me. For being such a large country, we hear surprisingly little from it, as if it were a planet on its own. That is the reason I wanted to read some Indian literature and stumbled upon Perumal Murugan when his novel [book:Poonachi: Or the Story of a Black Goat|38318462] was longlisted for the NBA for translated fiction.

It is quite a disturbing read. Kumaresan and Saroja are from different castes and marry secretly. Kumaresan then takes Saroja to his native village to live with his mother, but she and the whole village do not approve of the marriage (to put it mildly). Things go from bad to worse as the two lovers clearly underestimated the severity and fallout of what they did. I think the story is set in the 1980s - I hope things have improved in the meantime.

I found the story compelling, quite dramatic, but was not always convinced by the writing. The ending was also too abrupt for me.

Thank you Perumal Murugan and NetGalley for providing this book in exchange for an honest review.

Let's start with what made me get the book which was in this case the cover. I love the colors, the way it all overlaps and it gave me a sense of a romantic book. Reading the blurb intrigued me even more and I could see from Goodreads that it was a well received book. 

The story is fairly straight-forward and I enjoyed learning more about our main characters Saroja and Kumaresan. As the story develops, we're taken on a journey with them which will make us feel their pain, happiness, confusion, betrayal and all whilst wondering can their love conquer it all?  

When I initially finished the book, I was not sure fully how I felt and what I took from it? Whilst reading it, I also went through periods of being very engaged to parts of trying to make myself more intrigued than I really was. 

However, a few days after finishing the book and on reflection, I felt it was a beautifully written book with many important messages being conveyed.