Stories of the True

Stories of the True
A publisher’s wife comes to the rescue of an impoverished author who her husband has cheated; the son of a labourer faces off against an unscrupulous zamindar and wins; a forest officer finds himself transformed by his encounter with an ‘elephant doctor’; a Nayadi makes it to the civil services but struggles to do right by his tribal mother; tormented by questions of the self, a writer climbs up to the Kailash after being diagnosed with spinal cancer; a visionary breaks laws and braves solitary confinement for his idea of a borderless world.

Containing iconic stories like ‘Elephant Doctor’ and ‘A Hundred Armchairs’, this collection by the great Tamil writer Jeyamohan, brings together twelve inspiring and imaginative narratives, all based on the lives of real people. These stories explore the capacity of humans to hold on to their intrinsic goodness in the face of both the everyday and the extraordinary, and how their response in such moments of truth finds expression in multitudinous ways – as anger, compassion, fortitude, a capacity for suffering, self-discovery, a life of silent protest or even eccentric activism.

Gripping, often raw and deeply moving, this striking collection, the first major translation of Jeyamohan’s work in English, will renew your faith in humanity.