O. V. Vijayan

Ootupulackal Velukkuty Vijayan (July 2, 1930-March 30, 2005) was an Indian author and cartoonist, an important figure in modern Malayalam language literature.

Related Topics:
July 2 - 1930 - March 30 - 2005 - Indian - Malayalam language

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Born in the Palakkad district of Kerala, India, he graduated from Victoria College in Palakkad and got his masters degree in English literature from Presidency College in Madras. As a child, he was largely home-schooled.

Related Topics:
Palakkad - Kerala - India - Victoria College - Presidency College - Madras

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Vijayan wrote his first short story, "Tell Father Gonsalves", in 1953. He went on to write five novels and translated some of his own work into English. His first and most famous novel, Khasakinte Itihasam (The Legends of Khasak, 1969) tells the story of a teacher named Ravi dispatched to a newly created school in remote Khasak. He brought about a sea-change in Malayalam literature with this novel: so much so that it can be divided into pre-Khasak and post-Khasak eras, named after Vijayan's pioneering first novel. The former era was romantic and formal; the latter is modernist, post-modernist and post-post-modernist, with tremendous experimentation in style and content. In a way, Vijayan released Malayalam fiction writing from the shackles of tradition. He wrote many other short stories, essays and satire. He is also a cartoonist. The famous malayalam poet OV Usha is his sister.

Related Topics:
1953 - 1969

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O. V. Vijayan was almost certainly India's foremost fabulist in the recent past. An extraordinary writer with enormous range, he wrote everything from a semi-fictional history of his feudal-landlord family, 'Generations' to the scatological 'The Saga of Dharmapuri'. The sweep of his writing is evocative of such giants as William Faulkner and Gabriel García Márquez.

Related Topics:
William Faulkner - Gabriel García Márquez

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While Khasak continues to be his best-known work as an angry young man, his later works, The Eternity of Grace, The Path of the Prophet and Generations bespeak a mature transcendentalist.

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While he lived outside Kerala for most of his adult life, spending time in Delhi and in Hyderabad (where his wife Teresa was from), he never forgot his beloved Palakkad, where the 'wind whistles through the passes and the clattering black palms'. He created a magical Malabar in his works, one where the mundane and the inspired lived side-by-side. His Vijayan-land, a state of mind, is portrayed vividly in his work.

Related Topics:
Delhi - Hyderabad - Malabar

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O V Vijayan was unlucky not to win India's principal literary prize, the Jnanpith, possibly because he did not endear himself to the political powers-that-be through his trenchant cartoons. Vijayan's fans were also perennially hopeful that the Nobel Prize would finally recognize him. In 2003, he was awarded the Padma Bhushan.

Related Topics:
Jnanpith - 2003 - Padma Bhushan

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Vijayan struggled with Parkinson's Disease for a year when he died from organ failure in a Hyderabad hospital at age 75.

Related Topics:
Parkinson's Disease - Hyderabad

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