CMI Arts Initiative
Date: Wednesday, 14 February 2024
Time: 6.30 PM
Venue: Virtual Mode
Estuary: A Fictional Commentary on Educational Spaces
Perumal Murugan and Nandini Krishnan
Chennai Mathematical Institute Arts Initiative.
14-02-24

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Abstract

Perumal Murugan’s novel Estuary (Kazhimugam) is his first novel in an urban setting, The novel parodies everything from e-commerce to the fitness industry, art appreciation to political manipulation, cram schools to social networks. Through a meditative exploration of a father’s emotional landscape, Murugan tells of a world wrecked by unchecked consumerism and an obsession with growth, where technology overrides common sense and degrees don’t guarantee education. While Murugan will speak about the novel and his understanding of the space of education in India, his translator Nandini Krishnan will talk about the process of translating it.

About the Speakers: Perumal Murugan is a Tamil writer, scholar and literary chronicler. He has written twelve novels, six collections of short stories, six anthologies of poetry and many of the non-fiction books. In 2023, he won the JCB prize for his novel Fire Bird. His novel Pyre was long-listed for the International Booker Prize, 2023.

Nandini Krishnan is the author of Hitched: The Modern Woman and Arranged Marriage and Invisible Men: Inside India's Transmasculine Networks. She is also the award-winning translator of Estuary and Four Strokes of Luck by Perumal Murugan, and Ponniyin Selvan by Kalki Krishnamurthy.