Renowned writer Anand has been announced the winner of the Ezhuthachan award 2019, the highest literary award given by the Kerala government. Minister AK Balan made the announcement at a press conference in Thiruvananthapuram. The award carries a cash prize of Rs 5 lakh and a citation.
Anand, born P Sachidanandan in Irinjalakuda, Thrissur, is a winner of the Kendra Sahitya Akademi Award and three Kerala Sahitya Akademi Awards. He has also received the Valayar award, the Odakkuzhal award and the Vallathol award, among others. He has worked as a civil engineer in Bombay, Gujarat, Assam, and Bengal and now resides in New Delhi.
It was in 1970 that he published his first novel, Aalkkoottam (Crowd), which received rave reviews from critics. Three novels followed Aalkoottam, all equally abstract: Maranacertificate (Death Certificate), Abhayarthikal (Refugees) and Utharayanam.
Years later Anand wrote two more novels that would make him a sort of icon: Marubhoomikal Undakunnathu and Govardhanante Yaathrakal.
Anand also writes short stories, poems and essays. He mostly writes of man and his many complicated relationship with society.
In an interview given to Sahapedia, Anand said that it is Bombay that made him a writer. Soon after his engineering at the College of Engineering in Thiruvananthapuram, Anand went off to Bombay for a job. “Till that time I had no interest in writing ─ only as much as a young man of that age could have. Nothing more than that. But perhaps, the city Bombay kindled the writer in me,” he says.
The platform for Aalkoottam was also Bombay. The novel covers the period immediately after India’s independence. It is late writer M Govindan that encouraged Anand to publish it.
Uttarayanam, his second novel, was about the Emergency. Abhayarthikal was about refugees coming to Bengal during the war. Anand had been in the army too but not taken part in a war.
