Description
In a coastal village on the Alapuzha shore, a young Hindu fisherwoman and a Muslim trader fall into a love that the community’s laws cannot permit. As the sea promises livelihood and peril, the village’s traditions demand a kind of “virtue” that binds women’s lives to men’s safety, turning romance into a public matter of faith, reputation, and survival. Through lyrical attention to nature and the harsh social machinery of taboos, the novel explores forbidden desire, gendered power, and the cost of belonging to a world governed by rigid rules. Written in Thakazhi Sivasankara Pillai’s distinctive social-realism style, this landmark Malayalam novel—translated into English—offers a tragic, postcolonial lens on how love is tested by culture, authority, and the economies of belief.
Available Editions
paperback
DC Books/Kottayam/India
Published Jan 1, 2010
207 pages
ISBN: 9788171305506
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Details
First Published
1962
Language
mal
Content Warnings
Content and trigger warnings for Chemmeen by Thakazhi Sivasankara Pillai.