Perumal Murugan is the star of contemporary Tamil literature. An award-winning writer, poet and scholar, he has garnered both critical acclaim and commercial success for his vast array of work. His novels have been translated into English to immense acclaim, including
Current Show, Pyre, Seasons of the Palm, which was shortlisted for the Kiriyama Prize in 2005, and
One Part Woman, his best-known work, which was shortlisted for the Crossword Award, longlisted for the inaugural National Book Award for Translation and won the prestigious ILF Samanvay Bhasha Samman.
A Lonely Harvest and
Trial by Silence-his two ingenious parallel sequels to
One Part Woman-were shortlisted for the JCB Prize for Fiction 2019.
A Lonely Harvest was also longlisted for the DSC Prize for South Asian Literature 2019.
Songs of a Coward is a collection of his poetry written in exile. His debut novel was published in English as
Rising Heat in 2020, nearly three decades after it was first published in Tamil.
A king decrees that all humans be skinned alive. A man runs from words that hound him like a pack of wolves. A legion of white snakes sweeps across a land blighted by drought. A beleaguered soul laments the loss of a homeland. A coward's many virtues are lauded to disturbing effect.
By turns passionate, elegiac, angry, tender, nightmarish and courageous, the poems in Songs of a Coward weave an exquisite tapestry of rich images and turbulent emotions. Written during a period of immense personal turmoil, these verses are an enduring testament to the resilience of an imagination under siege and the liberating power of words in one's darkest moments.
