First Flood – Ponniyin Selvan Book 1

Product Description

A SCINTILLATING NEW TRANSLATION OF THE CLASSIC TAMIL NOVEL.

Vallavarayan Vandiyadevan, a scion of the Vaanar clan, sets out across the Chozha land to deliver a secret message from Crown Prince Aditya Karikalan. Does he manage to safely deliver this message? Or does he get trapped in the sinister royal conspiracy that he unwittingly uncovers on his journey?

The interest that Ponniyin Selvan generated when it was first serialised in Kalki, and the manifold increase in circulation of and subscription to the magazine, saw it published in multiple volumes soon after. Critics used the term ‘Kalki Tamil’ to describe its style where slang alternates with scholarship, wordplay with ecstatic prose and vivid imagery.

Kalki’s words are crafted with care, his prose is lyrical and his linguistic manipulations are difficult to move into another tongue. Nandini Krishnan rises to the challenge by going back to the original text and rendering it anew without condensing or paraphrasing the narrative—devices that are apparent in the existing translations.

For ease of reading, and because every chapter is a cliff-hanger, with plot twists and turns befitting an airport read, each of the original five volumes has been divided further, into shorter books that are easy to hold and carry around.

Volume One, The First Flood, introduces us to the world of the Cholas and quite incredibly marries a page-turner of a story with travelogue and history.

‘Kalki’ is the pen name of Ramaswamy Krishnamurthy (1899-1954), whose career in writing and journalism began as activism during the struggle for Indian independence. He served as editor of the popular Tamil magazine Ananda Vikatan before launching Kalki. The magazine—and eventually its founder—was named for the mythological tenth avatar of Vishnu to symbolise a vision to ‘destroy regressive regimes, express radical thoughts, take readers into new directions, and create a new era’. Kalki wrote several novels, including Parthiban Kanavu and Sivakamiyin Sabadam, as well as political essays, film reviews, dance and music critiques and scholarly work.