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reethu_ravi's review
5.0
Trigger warning: Suicide, violence.
Theeyoor Chronicles' intriguing premise is what lured me to the book. Initially, I was a bit sceptical; the subject seemed heavy and I wasn't sure it's something I'd want to get into right now. Nevertheless, I did. And I couldn't be happier, as this book might be one of my favourite 2021 releases.
In Theeyoor Chronicles, a journalist goes to Theeyoor, a fictional village in Kerala, to investigate the high number of suicides and disappearances there. However, even after he has finished his assignment, something about the incidents and the village nudges him to write the village's history. He thus pens Theeyoor's story based on his notes, the book 'The History of Theeyoor' written by historian Wardha Gopalan, anecdotes of the locals, and letters and journals of individuals, along with some incidents the journalist imagines himself.
An excellent amalgamation of history, myth, and facts, Theeyoor Chronicles, at its core, talks about the ordinary lives of ordinary people - their religious, cultural, political, and spiritual stances, their relationships with one another, their work, as well as their internal turmoil and more. While the story is set in a village in Kerala, it is at once universal, and relevant to the present times.
The book spans around the first nine decades of the twentieth century and has a vast number of characters. So much so that it was a bit hard for me to keep up with who's who, especially since many names were similar. As the stories of each of the characters unfold, several important historical events of both Kerala and India become crucial to the plot.
While some characters become part of the formation of the local cell of the Communist Party, some others are part of the 1940 Morazha strike. Several others' lives are entwined with the cholera epidemic in the 1940s or the Emergency in the late 1970s and early 1980s, and so on. Meanwhile, several political and cultural figures such as Mahatma Gandhi, A.K. Gopalan, and E.M.S Namboodiripad are mentioned in the novel.
N Prabhakaran is a master storyteller. One of the things I loved the most about the novel is its narrative style. While it's journalistic reporting on one hand, on the other, it is storytelling at its best. In one chapter you are reading a character's diary entry and in another, you are going through a letter written years ago. In yet another one, a character is telling their story in their own words. All this played a critical role in making this book a page-turner for me.
This book was originally published in Malayalam in 1999 as "Theeyoor Rekhakal." Jayasree Kalathil (who also translated S Hareesh's Meesa into Moustache) has done a splendid job in translating this into English. Furthermore, the illustrations in the book by C. Bhagyanath are out of the world.
I cannot recommend this book enough. It has a brilliant plot, great narration, and a slew of well-crafted characters. It opened my eyes to many aspects of Kerala's history, which I wasn't aware of. While I did some digging up of my own, the book comes with a brief summary of all the historical events mentioned in the novel, making it easier for readers to better understand the events.
More people need to know about this book and devour it for the love of literature and a brilliantly penned story, if nothing else. However, be warned that there are descriptions of suicide and violence in the book that could be triggering to some.
Theeyoor Chronicles' intriguing premise is what lured me to the book. Initially, I was a bit sceptical; the subject seemed heavy and I wasn't sure it's something I'd want to get into right now. Nevertheless, I did. And I couldn't be happier, as this book might be one of my favourite 2021 releases.
In Theeyoor Chronicles, a journalist goes to Theeyoor, a fictional village in Kerala, to investigate the high number of suicides and disappearances there. However, even after he has finished his assignment, something about the incidents and the village nudges him to write the village's history. He thus pens Theeyoor's story based on his notes, the book 'The History of Theeyoor' written by historian Wardha Gopalan, anecdotes of the locals, and letters and journals of individuals, along with some incidents the journalist imagines himself.
An excellent amalgamation of history, myth, and facts, Theeyoor Chronicles, at its core, talks about the ordinary lives of ordinary people - their religious, cultural, political, and spiritual stances, their relationships with one another, their work, as well as their internal turmoil and more. While the story is set in a village in Kerala, it is at once universal, and relevant to the present times.
The book spans around the first nine decades of the twentieth century and has a vast number of characters. So much so that it was a bit hard for me to keep up with who's who, especially since many names were similar. As the stories of each of the characters unfold, several important historical events of both Kerala and India become crucial to the plot.
While some characters become part of the formation of the local cell of the Communist Party, some others are part of the 1940 Morazha strike. Several others' lives are entwined with the cholera epidemic in the 1940s or the Emergency in the late 1970s and early 1980s, and so on. Meanwhile, several political and cultural figures such as Mahatma Gandhi, A.K. Gopalan, and E.M.S Namboodiripad are mentioned in the novel.
N Prabhakaran is a master storyteller. One of the things I loved the most about the novel is its narrative style. While it's journalistic reporting on one hand, on the other, it is storytelling at its best. In one chapter you are reading a character's diary entry and in another, you are going through a letter written years ago. In yet another one, a character is telling their story in their own words. All this played a critical role in making this book a page-turner for me.
This book was originally published in Malayalam in 1999 as "Theeyoor Rekhakal." Jayasree Kalathil (who also translated S Hareesh's Meesa into Moustache) has done a splendid job in translating this into English. Furthermore, the illustrations in the book by C. Bhagyanath are out of the world.
I cannot recommend this book enough. It has a brilliant plot, great narration, and a slew of well-crafted characters. It opened my eyes to many aspects of Kerala's history, which I wasn't aware of. While I did some digging up of my own, the book comes with a brief summary of all the historical events mentioned in the novel, making it easier for readers to better understand the events.
More people need to know about this book and devour it for the love of literature and a brilliantly penned story, if nothing else. However, be warned that there are descriptions of suicide and violence in the book that could be triggering to some.
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