Devanura Mahadeva: The Prose of Alterity

Devanura Mahadeva’s is a powerful and influential voice in contemporary South Asian and Dalit literature. His compact oeuvre has been widely commented upon in Kannada and, occasionally, in English as well. They have changed existing views among Kannada readers on literature’s relationship with situated practices of caste, gender, and politics, as well as humankind’s larger quest for freedom. Much of this remains unknown beyond the Kannada-speaking region.

This book is a sustained engagement with Mahadeva’s work that seeks to fill this lacuna. It includes translations of select samples of Mahadeva’s fiction and nonfiction writings and some of the major responses to these works from Kannada. In addition, there are essays by leading scholars of Kannada literature and language that explore the position that Mahadeva enjoys as a public intellectual in the region, aspects of language, caste, and gender in his
writings, as well as the challenges of translating his works, which borrow deeply from oral linguistic and mythopoeic conventions. Together, they place in relief Mahadeva’s life and works in a manner that underscores his significance not only for Kannada or South Asian literature and the Dalit movement but also for the larger history of progressive movements across South Asia.

Part of the Writer in Context series, this book will be useful for scholars and researchers of Indian literature, Kannada literature, Dalit Literature, English literature, postcolonial studies, global south studies, and translation studies.

Manu V. Devadevan, a historian, poet, and translator, is Associate Professor at the Indian Institute of Technology Mandi, Himachal Pradesh. A multilingual author, he writes in English, Kannada, and Malayalam. His works of history include A Prehistory of Hinduism and The ‘Early Medieval’ Origins of India. He has published four volumes of poems in Kannada and translated the twelfth-century Kannada vachanas into English. Devadevan is a recipient of
the Infosys Prize in Humanities for the year 2019.