About the Book: Children, Women, Men
This intricately woven narrative is one of the landmark novels of Indian
modernism
This ambitious novel, teeming with characters, focuses on the family of
Srinivasa Aiyar or SRS, who moves from his ancestral house in Alapuzhai in
Kerala, to the more modern Kottayam, before returning to his wife Lakshmis home
in Nagercoil in Tamil Nadu. Set in the late 1930s and reflecting the political
and social turmoil of the pre-war years, it chronicles the psychological
conflict between SRS and his nine-year-old son, Balu; the moral struggle of a
young widow, Anandam, as she considers remarriage; and the political journey of
Sridaran, who