English

A Book illustrated by Earthling

Selected as the best novel for the Zero Degree Publishing-Tamizharasi Trust Literary Award 2021.

The narration that travels backwards and forwards from the present is an infinite creation that touches upon facets such as the lifestyle of the traditional desert Bedouin tribes, migrant Indians’ plight, poetry, human desires, modern philosophy, primal lust, the vastness of the desert, invisible Jinns and awe-inspiring nature. There is no doubt that “Al Khozama”, which brings a fresh dimension not only to Tamil literature but to Indian literature, in general, will help create a limitless expanse in the eyes of the readers. 

Journalist Kishan Vidrohi has been
murdered...or not. There is no witness, no
evidence, and no corpse. His bedclothes are
bloodied and arrows stained with blood have been found in his room.

With the media playing down the death, his protégé sets out to discover the truth. Through the murder - if it is indeed murder - he learns the history of the city and
the country that vanished beneath it. The real estate business, hydropower companies, and transport and urban planners, have descended on virgin land promising development, to a people who find themselves in a place they no
longer own and can barely name. Are they
doomed to life in this realisation of the mythical Lemuria Islands, or will they regain the land of their ancestors?

Playing on myth and magic realism, even while looking at a story that has staged in every part of any developing nation with natural resources on offer, Ranendra forces us to examine the grey shades in the conflict between tribal rights and urbanisation in his
A Country Vanishes.

Orphaned at birth, little Oliver Twist has no family or friends to care for him. From the workhouse where he is raised, he starts working for a coffin maker, until he is tricked into joining a gang of thieves. Will Oliver's kind-hearted nature help him overcome his dire circumstances and discover the secret of his identity or will he fall prey to the lifestyle he has been trapped in...? Read along Charles Dickens' victorian tale of heartbreak, adventure and intrigue.

A dog that wins everyone’s affection by barking and laughing madly through her ailment. A stud bull that conveys the melancholy in his soul through his eyes. A kiosk owner whose sunny personality bounces off the tree stump where he leaves food for the neighbourhood strays. A chic lady with a rescued street dog and a penchant for profanity.

These are some of the colorful characters that the author encounters when he turns his life upside down and leaves his hometown Chennai to go and study veterinary medicine in the beautiful tropical island of Sri Lanka.

Often hilarious, occasionally sad, speaking of friendship, dreams, challenges, and love, these are the stories of the author’s unforgettably mad ride through veterinary college in Sri Lanka and early years as a newly-qualified veterinary doctor in south India.

Deborah Treisman was only 11 years old when she sent her first story to The New Yorker magazine. The New Yorker pays the highest amount to the stories it published. The story was rejected. In 22 years Deborah became the editor of Fiction in the same magazine that rejected her story.
I thought of Neyamukil when I read this. She is only 9 years old and has written a poem under the title AUTUMN. It goes like this.
If I were a creature,
That ate the ground,
I would devour the road as chips
As I ride on my cycle.
Autumn is so crunchy!
The imagery of devouring the road as chips is unique and playful. It reminds of the poems by Billy Collins, former poet laureate of the USA. I am confident Neyamukil will attain great heights. I wish her all the best.
- A Muttulingam, Pre-eminent writer in Modern Tamil literature
Children’s minds are fresh and quirky, full of energy, yet it is the rare child who feels driven to commit her words to the page. Neyamukil’s poems are heartfelt, wide-ranging, and filled with inquiry. The sun becomes female; riding a bike endows the rider with zooming pleasure. Justice and humility are obliquely elevated. Small moments of hope and joy are painted in light strokes. Here is a young writer who loves words and is unafraid to express her vision of the world.
—Uma Krishnaswami, writer and author of books for young readers

It is my considered opinion that in the works of Mr. Ka. Naa. Subramaniam modern Tamil fiction has reached its grand apotheosis. His is a varied but well-integrated world. He sees, as the cliche has it, life steadily and sees it whole. To him modernity is nothing but a re-examination of the basic forces of our tradition and a subtle modulation of their perspective.
The Fall may be described as an psychological fiction. The novel recounts in its description of Tanjore, how it has lost its past glory and compares it with the lot of a prosperous family fallen on evil days.
- Nakulan

A dog that wins everyone’s affection by barking and laughing madly through her ailment. A stud bull that conveys the melancholy in his soul through his eyes. A kiosk owner whose sunny personality bounces off the tree stump where he leaves food for the neighbourhood strays. A chic lady with a rescued street dog and a penchant for profanity.

These are some of the colorful characters that the author encounters when he turns his life upside down and leaves his hometown Chennai to go and study veterinary medicine in the beautiful tropical island of Sri Lanka.

Often hilarious, occasionally sad, speaking of friendship, dreams, challenges, and love, these are the stories of the author’s unforgettably mad ride through veterinary college in Sri Lanka and early years as a newly-qualified veterinary doctor in south India.

Sivasankari Vasanth is an experienced and passionate Early Years Educator, working in Abu Dhabi, UAE.
Sameer and Asha, secondary school children are trying to solve a series of challenging puzzles. Each chapter has a puzzle designed not only to entertain but also to acquire knowledge. While reading the book, you will also enter the adventure of solving these puzzles along with them. Whether you are an avid young reader or a parent seeking a book that can captivate and educate, this book is your perfect match.

The most pitiless in Christendom…
It was a long colonial moment. The Portuguese arrived in Goa with a sword in one hand and a crucifix in the other. They would stay for 450 years.
When god died is set against the dark backdrop of the Inquisition, a religious tribunal set up for the suppression of heresy and the enforcement of Catholic orthodoxy.
In 1662, Maria de Furtado sails to Goa from Lisbon to marry a nobleman selected for her by the Crown. Just a few hours before the wedding, her fiancé dies in the arms of his mulatto slave.
Maria is forced to marry a Goan. The relationship,imbued with toxicity from the start, is poisoned further by her inability to have his child.
A decade later, Maria falls in love. Marco, a successful Portuguese merchant, lives in the shadow of his Jewish lineage.
On discovering their relationship, Maria’s husband unleashes the savagery of the Inquisition on them. As the novel hurtles to its violent end, Maria is offered the chance to avenge her lover’s death.
Exploring religion and race, love and loyalty, identity and survival, When god died is a searing story that asks the reader to reconsider what it means to win in the name of God.

Time is like a wooden swing rocking back and forth in an ancestral home in this translation of Era Murukan’s critically acclaimed Tamil novel Arasoor Vamsam. Two brothers from the future bring odd gifts, a king is obsessed with dirge music from his neighbour’s gramophone, a mentally challenged brother has an affair with a ghost who smells of bats, an old man tends to levitate in his sleep, the severed foot of a man grows an extra toe and many more imaginative renderings of human folly enliven this funny story of Arasoor and its inhabitants. Set in the colonial period, this highly engaging novel captures changing times by bending time to its will, but ultimately leaves the reader wondering—has anything truly changed?

Parallel Lives examines the anatomy of a custodial death in the 1990s, in a Madras that is becoming Chennai. The story of the investigation is interspersed with the story of the city through the eyes of the civil servant Hari. A parallel narrative is woven in from the perspective of a beggar on a pavement, whose life stands testimony to the breakdown of the migrant dream. The outcome of the investigation and the identity of the beggar keep the reader guessing until the final reveal.

Ahana, a wealthy thirty-three-year-old New Delhi woman, flees the pain of her mother's death, and her dark past, by accepting a huge project in New Orleans, where she'll coordinate an annual conference to raise awareness of violence against women. Her half-Indian, half-Irish colleague and public relations guru, Rohan Brady, who helps Ahana develop her online presence, offends her prim sensibilities with his raunchy humour. She is convinced that he's a womanizer.
Meanwhile, she seeks relief from her pain in an online support group, where she makes a good friend: the mercurial Jay Dubois, who is also grieving the loss of his mother. Louisiana Catch is an emotionally immersive novel about identity, shame, and who we project ourselves to be in the world. It's a book about Ahana's unreliable instincts and her ongoing battle to determine whom to place her trust in as she, Rohan, and Jay shed layers of their identities.

I don’t want to blend in, like  some of  the  others, slough away  the  past, adopt this new  place, or  rather  attempt  to be adopted by it,  as an orphan. No place  will  mother or father  me  now.  Countries are not mine and  I am not theirs. I feel  nothing for  them,  they are merely  temporary, political  intrusions into geographic cartography.

Precision and disarray, light and dark, a map that will tame a house, a house one can never know. In this searing debut, Lara Fergus startles the reader at every turn, weaving the politics of gender, race, language and sexuality through a story of war and peace, across geographies and histories. My Sister Chaos remains topical over a decade after it was first published.

I am in complete awe of the in-depth research that may have gone into writing the war scenes. Kudos to the author for this perfect blend of relationships, emotions, and stoutness of characters.
- Chirasree Bose, Amazon Best-selling Author, Pune.
Breaking the preset norms and trends, a fresh promising voice of the millennium emerges uniquely and gently through ‘The Cord’.
- Jayanthi Sankar, multiple award-winning Author,
Singapore.
As the Colonial Indian land mass is divided amongst two groups, unawares are forced to choose sides as they undertake journeys with least hope and long bearings. But will the
consequences they face and the trials they withstand for the sake of the nation win over human emotions?
- Gautam Sasidharan, Author and Book reviewer,
Hyderabad.
Action, drama, romance, emotions, the ethical dilemma all in one fiction. The Cord is a page turner and is sure to win the thriller readers and history fiction lovers all over the world.
- Muralidharan Parthasarthy, Author, Chennai.
Crisp conversations and subtle notes have successfully
presented us with a lot of army life related facts in a very interesting but indirect way. A judicious blend of research and non-taxing storyline makes ‘The Cord’ stand out in its clarity and ease of narration, leaving the reader’s heart full with multifaceted emotions and nostalgia.
- Usha Nagasamy, Further Education College Lecturer, London.

THE TOWERS GUARD THEIR SECRETS IN SILENCE

Over 140 years, a Parsi clan from the ancient town of Navsari, meanders through plagues and curses, adulterous wives of cockless husbands, limerick reciting priests and conscientious black magicians, corpses desperately awaiting vultures, scorpion bite curers and fornicating first cousins, Sufi mystics, and poignant lovers; and, of course, the crusade to save the sacrosanct Towers of Silence; a story where not even the most perceptive can tell what is magic and what is real.

It’s the calm before the storm.

Crown Prince Aditha Karikalan is riding hell-for-leather towards Kadambur to honour Ilaiya Rani Nandhini’s kind invitation—while Vandhiyathevan is hurrying in the same direction, hell-bent on thwarting their meeting. Mandhakini Devi is abducted by ruffianly unknowns towards Thanjavur—while Poonguzhali, her niece, is hastening thither, to rescue her aunt. Peril threatens Sundara Chozhar, confined to his sickbed and at the mercy of Pandiya assassins—while Ilaiya Piratti strains every nerve to protect her father.

Will all three succeed in their quests? Will Arulmozhi Varmar recover from his ague? Will Aniruddhar’s schemes and stratagems save the royal family? Will Azhwarkkadiyaan’s efforts bear fruit? And lastly … will Chozha Nadu be free of the tangled web of conspiracies?

Azhagiyasingar's tales consist of both mental trauma and stunning twists. And all of them speak of the writer's own individual creativity. It is indeed remarkable that the author's creativity comprises so many dimensions. Some of the stories are very short. 

It is clear that Azhagiyasingar is very much bothered about both the present and the future. A streak of pain seems to run through his gentle teasing humour. 

                                 -Ashokamitran

When we listen to Tchaikovsky’s symphonies, we can visualize snow falling gently on to the
ground. All of Tchaikovsky’s fans have attested to this fact. Similarly while reading Sathana’s
tales, I could feel the ice and slowly drifting snowfall. Such stories have not appeared in Tamil earlier. Each one of these stories in this book is
easily worthy of being converted into world cinema with their themes and incidents. The
stories vividly unspool in front of our eyes even as we are reading them.
-Charu Nivedita

Author: Sathana 
Genre: Literature and Fiction
Publishing House: Zero Degree Publishing
No. Of Pages: 102
Language: English

One of ZDP’s aim is to introduce to the world some of the finest specimens of our literature. We take great pride in introducing our series ‘Boundless and Bare’, of which the first would be Thanjai Prakash, who is known for his bold, feminocentric stories.

Author: Thanjai Prakash
Genre: Literature and Fiction
Publishing House: Zero Degree Publishing
No. Of Pages: 172
Language: English

Shadow of the Palm Tree is set in Goa, India’s very own Shangri-la. It opens with a heart-rending tragedy: the death of a mother at her own hands. Yet the shadow of sadness cast on the Abreus took shape in the 1700s when the family converted to Christianity and joined the most lucrative enterprise of Christian Europe: the slave trade. From the day Imaculada, a traditional healer from Mozambique, entered the Abreu home, her family and theirs were fated to be entwined in a dark dance of intimacy. After their mother’s death, the Abreus flee from the penumbra of their collective grief becoming an inadvertent metaphor for the diasporic nature of the Goan community. As Goa gains independence, family equations are realigned once again. Claudinha, a descendant of Imaculada, flees Goa and the Abreus to take refuge with the Siddhis, a primitive tribal group. There is now no one left to deflect Imaculada’s malevolence. Will her prophecy finally be fulfilled? Richly told and profoundly moving, Shadow of the Palm Tree is a story of identity and survival, love and sacrifice, forgotten history and cultural conflicts.

Author: Vatsala Mendonca
Genre: Literature and Fiction
Publishing House: Zero Degree Publishing
No. Of Pages: 264
Language: English

A transporting tale set around the shifting power dynamics of viciously aggressive investors who enter a nation to maraud it's resources and will stop at nothing to make money. A stunning meditation on human nature and survival instincts, this novel poses intense moral questions. Discover a world of love and deception as it weaves through the extraordinary world of magical realism.

Author:  Saravanan Chandran
Genre: Literature and Fiction
Publishing House: Zero Degree Publishing
No. Of Pages: 188
Language: English

With new possibilities in storytelling, The Final Solitude exposes the injustice that prevailed during Emperor Aurangzeb’s rule in a fictional small kingdom in Eastern India, called Satgarh.
Interspersed with fantastical tales, this allegorical novel brings to light the torment and the trouble people faced during the lunatic king Pishada’s fascist regime.

Author: S. Ramakrishnan
Genre: Literature and Fiction
Publishing House: Zero Degree Publishing
No. Of Pages: 292
Language: English

With its mad patchwork of phone sex conversations, nightmarish torture scenes, tender love poems, numerology, and mythology, Charu Nivedita's novel 'ZERO DEGREE' is a startling work of South Indian transgressive fiction that unflinchingly probes the deepest psychic wounds of Humanity.

The beauty of Lakshmi Saravanakumar’s novel, Huntsman, lies in how masterfully Saravanakumar weaves issues of ecology and wildlife, rights of forest dwellers, and the clash between the traditional and the modern in a plot that is as gripping as the moments one might spend sitting on a machan on a tall tree in a dense forest on a full moon night, anticipating the arrival of a tiger.

What I specifically loved in Huntsmanwere the details that built up the novel when the bigger issues were not being narrated. For example, the naturalness with which polygamy and polyamory has been depicted. I am afraid I might give out spoilers, but I can not mention the relationship that Thangappan – the leading man, the eponymous “huntsman” of the novel – has with his three wives – Mari, Sagayarani, and Chellayi – and the feelings about other men that the wives might have. Then there is Thangappan’s masculinity which is fragile enough to be hurt by the disapproval of a child. I would just say that these details – apart from the important bigger parts which are already there – are what make Saravanakumar’s Huntsmansuch an engrossing and – I believe it is – important read.

-Hansda Sowvendra Shekhar

Author: Lakshmi Saravanakumar
Genre: Literature and Fiction
Publishing House: Zero Degree Publishing
No. Of Pages: 256
Language: English

A spectacular bouquet of a dozen stories travelling across time and space through colourfully multicultural contexts. The nonlinear narrative style helps the reader flow with the kaleidoscopic presentation of events.
– Dr. Lalitha Menon, retd Professor and HOD, Calicut, India

The stories are aptly published while we celebrate Singapore’s Bicentennial. ‘Punkah Wallah’, a delightful fiction worth re-visiting brings to life the different classes of our society, origins, cultures and how they functioned during the earliest days of the last century. ‘Did Churchill know?’ left me pleasantly surprised, shocked, and bemused.
– Angela Leong, Director of a Research firm, Singapore

Thoroughly enjoyed the short stories, finding them gripping and touching, with unexpected little twists. On my second reading, with real concentration, I found them even more interesting. They made me think more, and that is a good thing!
– Valerie Dümpelmann, EFL instructor, Germany

… is not only a story of how different generations relate to literature. A brilliant short story emblematically highlights many of the problems that characterize Tamil literature as a set of social practices in Singapore today.
– Sascha Ebeling, Associate Professor, University of Chicago, USA

Author: Jayanthi Sankar
Genre: Literature and Fiction
Publishing House: Zero Degree Publishing
No. Of Pages: 152
Language: English

Journey Dog Tales is a humorous, mildly politically incorrect, goofy set of real and imagined stories breezy enough to make millions smile. Arindam shares bits about Bapia-his father, Musa, the tablet breaker, Meid Zais from some desert, Agarbatti and her Indian born James Bond, amidst their chaos he makes you want to be a part of his ragbag of imagined and the real world. Or failing that make Journey Dog Tales a single-sit read.

Author: Arindam Mukherjee
Genre: Literature and Fiction
Publishing House: Zero Degree Publishing
No. Of Pages: 110
Language: English

From the entrance of the Padmanabhaswamy temple in Trivandrum, Kerala one could clearly see the market spread across like a mini Trivandrum extending as far as one could see like a thick carpet. Each of the shops and the people in the market carried a story within them. The author has lived,and breathed,the bazaar as the back of his hand. It is only fitting that the author has conceived this bookkeeping the bazaar as the heart with each character and story unique. His imagination brings out the interesting characteristics of each of the players depicted in the stories. With intricate descriptions woven into the story, the author lets the imagination of the reader flow freely like a river. These stories talk about the bitterness, the wants, the dreams, ego, lust and everything else that the bazaar flows with, These stories bring out the volatility that depicts the very human nature in its most naked form.

Author: A.Madhavan 
Genre: Literature and Fiction
Publishing House: Zero Degree Publishing
No. Of Pages: 116
Language: English