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.
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, and 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 place that Mahadeva enjoys as a public intellectual in the region, aspects of language, caste and gender in his writings, and 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 underlines 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.
List of Pictures. Preface to the Series. Preface. Acknowledgements.
Introduction Part I: Darkness and Light Fiction in Translation
1. Dambaru
bandadu (On the coming of tar)
2. Amasa
3. Moodala seemeli kolegile muntagi
(Murder and whatnot in the eastern countryside)
4. Marikondavaru (The vended)
5. Odalala (The depth of the frame), an excerpt
6. Kusumabale, two excerpts
Part II: The Truth of Justice and the Justice of Truth Nonfiction in
Translation
7. In search of nonviolence
8. Untouchability, where did you
spring from?
9. Untouchability, apartheids forefather
10. The history of the
Tagaduru untouchable colony
11. The tale of a thumb impression
12. Around
Lohias memory
13. On the beaten track of birth
14. To survive in agriculture
15. For accepting the Nripatunga award
16. At the farewell of senior
students, with Pampa
17. The Performance Review of Adivasi Deities
18. Now
Part III: Understanding Mahadevas Literary World Critical Examinations
19.
K. Aravind Mitra: The life and times of Devanura Mahadeva, A résumé
20.
Rajendra Chenni: Of peacocks and narratives: A note on Devanura Mahadevas
writings
21. Vanamala Viswanatha: When Will I Break Free from This HouseOh
Shiva! The critical humanism of Devanura Mahadeva
22. C. N. Ramachandran:
Reader response theories and Devanura Mahadevas Kusumabale
23. Kamalakar
Bhat: Devanura Mahadevas Kusumabale: A reflection on language and genre
24.
Vijayakumar M. Boratti: Devanura Mahadeva, untouchability and the politics of
translation Part IV: Speaking with Mahadeva, and Speaking of Him
Conversations and Interviews
25. Devanura Mahadeva and contemporary Kannada
literature, a conversation
26. An interview with Devanura Mahadeva
27. An
interview with Susan Daniel, translator
28. An interview with C.
Basavalingaiah, theatre director
29. An interview with T. L. Krishnegowda,
farmer leader
30. An interview with Shobha Nayak, Kannada poet Part V: In the
Eyes of Contemporaries Comments and Assessments
31. Devanura Mahadeva
32.
Dyavanooru and Odalala
33. Kusumabale
34. Devanura Mahadevas Politics.
Devanura Mahadeva: A bio-chronology. Bibliography. Picture Gallery. Index.
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 recipient of the Infosys Prize in Humanities for the year 2019.
