The Eighteenth Parallel (Paperback)

Paperback. Ashokamitran (19312017), a towering figure in modern Tamil literature, was born in Nizam-ruled Secunderabad. In his writing he often draws on his experiences of growing up there after the fall of the Nizam in the wake of Independence, as he does in his award-winning novel Padinettavadu Atchakodu(1977), The Eighteenth Parallel. One of Ashokamitrans finest works, the story revolves around Chandru, adolescent, vulnerable and guileless, growing up through the turbulence before and after 1947, when Hyderabad was the State of Nizam. This forms the charged political backdrop, closely interwoven with Chandrus life at home, at college, and his coming of age in the streets of Hyderabad. Chandru, whose father works for the Nizams Railway, is crazy about cricket and cinema, perplexed by his budding interest in girls, loves his buffalo, and can sing. His disarmingly unaffected yet riveting first-person narrative. As he negotiates friendships with Tamils like himself, Muslims, Anglo-Indians and girls, and struggles to make sense of peaceful Hyderabads violent accession to the Indian Union, the horrors wreaked by the Nizams Razakars, the communal riots, and World War II. Shipping may be from our Sydney, NSW warehouse or from our UK or US warehouse, depending on stock availability. …