Murder in Melur

Stuart Blackburn

Rupa Rainlight, 268 pages, Rs. 495

This first novel by this well-known scholar of South Indian literature and folklore is set in a small town in the early 1970s. Vijayan, a confused idealist, is buffeted by the politics of the period—the Rationalist, Dravidian and Communist movements in the Tamil country, as well as the incipient civil war in Sri Lanka. The murder of his friend Velan, a political activist, gives Vijayan an opportunity to put his ideas into practice, but also leads him into a web of deceit and political intrigue.