Published by Kitaab International, Horizon Afar is a collection of Tamil short stories written by Jayanthi Sankar and translator into English by P. Muralidharan.
This collection of short stories traverse beyond the contemporary life of Singapore on a quest to answer the eternal question, “What made life on this earth mechanical and devoid of meaning?” Presented here is a peek into the other side of modern life, opening new windows to the life and culture of various ethnicities of South East Asia.
Jayanthi Sankar is popular in the mainland just as amongst the writers of the diaspora. Her presence is totally absent in the stories themselves. The human side of Singapore, its students, the life of migrant workers and their aspirations to acquire resident status, interracial origins, lives of sex workers, cohabiting youth and many more such lucid narrations motivated me to translate them for English readers. The short story, “A Few Pages from Yuka Wong’s Diary”, on century-old cultural and political issues of China and Japan, is a unique work by any author of Indian origin.
About the author:
Jayanthi Sankar has been creatively active for the past twenty-one years in short stories, novels, translation, transcreations and essays. Several of her books have been awarded by renowned organisations. Born and brought up in India, she has lived in Singapore since 1990. After Loss and Laws, Horizon Afar is the second collection of her Tamil short stories that have been translated into English.
Her website at www.jeyanthisankar.com gives a glimpse of her writing journey.
About the translator:
P. Muralidharan writes with the pseudonym Sathyanandhan. He lives in Chennai, India, and continues his creative quest as a poet, a critic and a novelist in the Tamil literary arts. His ability to write creatively in all genres like short story, poems, columns, novel and criticism on a variety of subjects has made him stand out in the Modern Tamil literature for more than a decade. His works have been published in literary magazines like Kanaiyazhi. Thinnai.com has been a consistent platform for his works. Besides a collection of poetry Veliye veedu, his novels Purshartham and Vigraham have been published in print. Two of his novels Bodhi Maram and Mulveli were published as a series during 2012 and 2013 in Thinnai. His works on Ramayana and Zen, published in Thinnai during 2011 have gained him a wider readership recently. He writes weekly columns in pathivukal.com. All of his works are republished in his blog at https://sathyanandhan.com.
To buy: Horizon Afar
