Backlash

Having retired from the Kerala State Police, Shreedharan Nair seeks a quiet life in a small village. But the peace he has just begun to savour is shattered one night when stones clatter against his tiled roof. As the stone-pelting becomes routine, Nair-once feared as the ruthless ''Kaalan Shreedharan'', Kaalan being Yama, the god of death-suspects that retribution may finally be at his door. While some well-wishers see in it the handiwork of supernatural forces, others point to ghosts from his chequered past. Driven by fear and curiosity, Nair begins retracing his career, compiling a grim list of those he once brutalised with the infamous ''third degree''.

V.M. Devadas was born in 1981 in Wadakkancherry, Kerala. A prominent voice in contemporary Malayalam literature, he has authored five novels and seven short story collections, two of which have already been translated into English.

Nandakumar K.'s co-translation of M. Mukundan's Delhi Gadhakal (Delhi: A Soliloquy) won the JCB Prize for Literature in 2021.