Overview

Pothivelu Pandaram is known as a successful and God-fearing man about town-he has a loyal wife, three daughters, and ample money to pay for their dowries. However, it is an open secret that his success is fueled by a tawdry yet deeply profitable trade-for he owns a group of physically deformed beggars and places them outside various temples to make money for him. The beggars are mere ""items"" to Pandaram, hardly human, to be bought and sold like cattle. But when the novel descends right into their world-the world of the ""abyss""-and places the listener in their midst, it takes on a marvelous, unexpected turn. Bitter, black, raw, and yet laced with humor and tenderness, The Abyss (Ezhaam Ulagam) is one of the most acclaimed works of the great Tamil writer Jeyamohan. It was adapted into an acclaimed film in 2009 called Naan Kadavul (I am God) which won a National Film Award for its director. Written with an unflinching eye and suffused with a deep existential longing, it is an extraordinary novel-in its terrain, its fundamental questions about humanity and its depiction of human suffering and liberation.

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B. Jeyamohan (also credited as Jayamohan) is one of the most influential contemporary, Tamil, and Malayalam writers and literary critics from Nagercoil in Kanyakumari District in the south Indian state of Tamil Nadu. He entered the world of Tamil literature in the 1990s. Jeyamohan has had impacted the Tamil literary landscape as it emerged from the post-modern phase. His best-known and critically acclaimed work is Vishnupuram, a deeply layered fantasy set as a quest through various schools of Indian philosophy and mythology. His other well-known novels include Rubber, Pin Thodarum Nizhalin Kural, Kanyakumari, Kaadu, Pani Manithan, Eazhaam Ulagam, and Kotravai. His writing is heavily influenced by the works of humanitarian thinkers Leo Tolstoy and Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi. Drawing on the strength of his life experiences and extensive travel around India, Jeyamohan is able to re-examine and interpret the essence of India's rich literary and classical traditions. Suchitra Ramachandran is a bilingual writer and translator. Suchitra writes short stories, essays, literary reviews in Tamil and English, and translates between the two languages. Through her stories, Suchitra raises fundamental questions of existentialism in artistic and scientific contexts. Neil Shah is an Audie Award-nominated narrator and AudioFile Earphones Award winner who has recorded over one hundred audiobooks. A classically trained actor with an MFA from the Old Globe/University of San Diego program, Neil has appeared off-Broadway and on regional stages, as well as in film and television.

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