Tamil writer Perumal Murugan’s book Pyre has been announced as a part of the longlist for the 2023 International Booker Prize. One among the 13 contenders, Pyre was written originally in Tamil as Pookuzhi in 2013 and translated into English by Aniruddha Vasudevan in 2016. Set in the 1980s, the novel revolves around an inter-caste couple – Saroja and Kumaresan, who get married, and the struggles they face when they move to Kumaresan’s village in southern Tamil Nadu. The Tamil version of the book has been dedicated to Ilavarasan, a Dalit youth who was found dead at the railway track after he married Divya, a woman from the dominant Vanniyar caste.
Perumal Murugan received severe backlash for one of his books Madhorubhagan (translated to English as One Part Woman by Aniruddha Vasudevan) for portraying the struggles faced by a childless couple over a century ago based in Tiruchengode which practiced “tradition-free consensual sex rituals.” Members from Dheeran Chinnamalai Gounder Peravai, a dominant caste Hindu outfit protested against the book in 2014 and burnt copies of it for portraying Gounder women ‘in a bad light’. After this controversy, Perumal Murugan declared that “the author Perumal Murugan is dead” and that people were free to burn his books. He also said that he would never write again. However, he published several books after that, including two in 2021.
Books from three languages – Tamil, Bulgarian and Catalan have been longlisted for the first time. Among the nominees, a notable name is the French novelist Maryse Conde (86), who is the oldest person to be nominated. She is nominated for The Gospel According to the New World, which she dictated to her husband and translator Richard Philcox, as she had a problem with her eyesight.
The panel of judges is chaired by the prize-winning French-Moroccan novelist, Leila Slimani. The shortlist of six books will be announced on April 18, while the winning title will be announced at a ceremony at the Sky Garden in London on May 23.