Mole!

The fictional events narrated in Mole! – an English translation of Otran, a novel by Ashokamitran – take place within a period of seven months, nearly all of them in the American Midwest. The narrator, a culturally rooted writer from Chennai, is transplanted amidst a motley group of fellow-writers from distant parts of the world, all of them as dangerously dislocated as him. Deprived of the language that has brought them fulfillment and distinction, these writers struggle to retain their place of precarious honour in a strange, unfamiliar and sometimes hostile environment. And in the background looms the endearing, if exasperating, landscape of twentieth-century America.

Ashokamitran is one of the most distinguished of contemporary Tamil writers. His work has been extensively translated into many Indian and European languages. He has won many honours and awards, including the Sahitya Akademi award in 1996. The English translation of his major Tamil novel Padinettavadu Atchakodu has been published by Orient Blackswan as The Eighteenth Parallel.

Kalyan Raman’s English translation illumines the subtle, spare strength of Ashokamitran’s prose. N. Kalyan Raman is a senior telecom professional, whose translations of Tamil short fiction has been published in several collections of Indian language fiction in translation, including the KATHA Prize Stories. He has translated a collection of Ashokamitran’s short stories The Colours of Evil.