Selected Tamil Short Stories

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In a vast country like India, where great regional differences in culture and behaviour obtain, and the various languages retain their exclusive origins and identities, it is not possible to maintain a complete and continuous communication between different parts of the country on a national scale. There cannot be a truly meaningful awareness of the country's total literary activity and output without such intercommunication through the medium of translation. Translations of some of the better known works of Indian literary giants like Tagore, Premchand and others have been successfully undertaken and their writings have been read and enjoyed in all parts of India. There has, however, been no systematic endeavour to take up the important works of each region and present them in a widely understood language.

Fusion Books has planned the publication of a series of anthologies of English translations of modern short stories written in the different Indian languages, with the aim of bringing the people of India closer and making Indian literature available in other parts of the world. The task of selecting, editing and translating the stories has been entrusted to competent writers and critics and the series, when complete, will present a full picture of the contemporary short story in India.

Fiction both long and short might have existed from time immemorial in the continent of India but what we call the modern novel and the modern short story, came to India through contact with the Western output, especially through English. If other languages and literatures had an impact, it was mainly through English translation.

The earliest novels were written in the last quarter of the 19th century, in Bengali, in Hindi, in Tamil, in Telugu, in Malayalam and somewhat later in other languages. The short story in most of the languages in India was a later product, a product which belongs to the times of the rise of the periodical press.

A detailed study of the various influences that went into the making of the Indian short story is not necessary in this brief introduction to an anthology of Tamil short stories but in general, it can be said that Edgar Allan Poe, Nathaniel Hawthorne, Bret Harte, O Henry among Americans, Sir Walter Scott, Charles Dickens, RL Stevenson, George Moore, James Joyce, Katherine Mansfield, A E Coppard, Leonard Merrick among the English, Ivan Turgenev, Nikolai Gogol, Tolstoy, Dostoevski, Anton Tchekov, Maxim Gorki among the Russians, Guy de Maupasant, Villiers De Lisle Adams, Catulle Mendes, Prosper Merimee, Anatole France among the French, and others were among the major and recognisable influences on the Indian short story in general and on Tamil short stories in particular. The earliest wave of the Tamil short story was contemporaneous with the work of William Saroyan, Thomas Mann, Luigi Pirandello and a few others.