White Elephant

White Elephant - Paperback

$22.00
Sale price  $22.00 Regular price 
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White Elephant

White Elephant - Paperback

by Jeyamohan
$22.00
Sale price  $22.00 Regular price 
Format
Paperback $22.00 Paperback $19.99

Book Overview

A dazzling postcolonial inversion of Heart of Darkness set during the Great Indian Famine of 1878 that recounts its devastating cost to both life and human dignity.

It is 1878, and Aiden Byrne, an Irish police officer in Madrasapatnam, loyal servant to the crown and Queen Victoria, knows that there is no danger that he ought to fear in this heatblasted and famine-devastated land.

But when he discovers two laborers from Tudor Ice Company being brutally whipped in the countryside, he is dragged into a world whose surface he has only skimmed before. He sees the horrific conditions under which the local workers, members of the lowest rung of the caste system, process the mammoth blocks of ice that are carved out of frozen New England lakes and transported to India for use in the drinks and iceboxes of the colonial forces.

When the two workers disappear--presumably killed--Byrne is approached by Kathavarayan, a charismatic young activist belonging to a lower caste, who is looking to put things right. He sets Byrne off on a journey that brings him face-to-face with the bloody toll of the famine raging through the country--one that would kill more than eight million people before it was done--and forces him to grapple with his own precarious and complicated role in the machinery of the British empire.

In White Elephant, Jeyamohan uses surreal prose and vivid imagery to deliver a searing account of a crucial moment in the history of a nation, a city, and a people.
ISBN9780374619428
Author Jeyamohan
PublisherFsg Originals
GenreLiterature
FormatPaperback
PublishedJuly 2026
LanguageENG- English
Pages336
Weight1.0 lb
Target AudienceAdults
Print SizeStandard Print

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About Jeyamohan

Jeyamohan is a preeminent writer in modern Tamil literature. His works of fiction examine fundamental human questions while being rooted in the spiritual, cultural and literary traditions of India. Venmurasu, his reimagination of the epic Mahabharata over a novel-series of twenty-six parts, is considered one of the longest literary works in the world. His other major works include the novels Vishnupuram, Kottravai, Pin Thodarum Nizhalin Kural, Kaadu, and Ezhaam Ulagam (The Abyss). He is the founder of several important cultural initiatives in Tamil, including a literary organization called the Vishnupuram Literary Circle, an encyclopedia of Tamil culture called Tamil Wiki, and an institute that offers courses in philosophy, cultural and religious studies called Nityavanam. The Abyss is his second work to be available in English, following his short story collection Stories of the True, which was a finalist for the National Translation Award in 2023. Jeyamohan lives in Nagercoil, India.Suchitra writes fiction in Tamil and translates between Tamil and English. Her work has appeared in literary magazines including Asymptote and Narrative Magazine. She won the Asymptote Close Approximations Prize for Fiction Translation in 2017. The Abyss is her first full-length translated work. Suchitra lives in Bengaluru, India.

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