Includes bibliographical references.

"The schools" (from the Legends of Khasak) -- "The conversion" (from the Legends of Khasak) -- "The general" (from the Saga of Dharmapuri) -- Chapter 24 from the Infinity of grace / translated by Ramesh Menon and the author -- "After the hanging" -- "The blessing of the wild fowl" -- Two wars : two finger-prints / translated by E.V. Ramakrishnan -- The forgotten book / translated by E.V. Ramakrishnan -- Understanding divisiveness -- On Bangarwadi / translated by K. Rabachandran -- Meditation on words / translated by K. Ramachandran -- Memory of a Vermillion Mark / translated by K.C. Muraleedharan -- Laughter of detachment / K.P.Appan ; translated by K.T. Dinesh -- The music of Khasak / Asha Menon ; translated by K. Ramachandran -- The paternal clock / P.K. Rajasekharan ; translated by Arunlal, Mokeri -- Orality, literacy and modernity : a reading of the Legends of Khasak / E.V. Ramakrishnan ; translated by Dhanesh, Mankulam with the author -- O.V. Vijayan : a sage and an iconoclast / K. Satchidanandan -- At the sign of the goat / David Selbourne -- Vijayan the sceptic visionary : a reading of the Saga of Dharmapuri / P.P. Raveendran -- The quest and after : a reading of the Infinity of grace / V. Rajakrishnan -- The rite of expiation for the accumulated guilt / Thomas Mathew -- From transgression to transcendence : O.V. Vijayan's short fiction / E.V. Ramakrishnan -- Vijayan's journeys / P. Pavithran ; translated by K.C. Muraleedharan -- Vijayan's women : beyond the deterministic dogmas / G. Ushakumari ; translated by E.V. Ramakrishnan -- O.v. Vijayan's politics / V.C. Sreejan -- The Saga of Dharmapuri in the twenty first century / Ajay P. Mangat ; translated by K. Ramachandran -- Thalamurakal (generations) : the caste system as seen through the cracked mirror of the present / E.V. Ramakrishnan -- Self-translation as self-righting : O.V. Vijayan's the Legends of Khasak / Chitra Panikar -- The writer as translator : self-translation in O.V.Vijayan's the Legends of Khasak / Sanju Thomas -- Text as performance : Deepan Sivaraman's adaptation of the Legends of Khasak / a conversation between Deepan Sivaraman and Manila C. Mohan ; translated by E.V. Ramakrishnan -- A cartoonist's workshop / O.V. Vijayan ; translated froM Malayalam by P.N. Venugopal -- Foreword to the volume, the tragic idiom : O.V. Vijayan's Cartoons and Notes on India / Bruce Petty -- He also cartooned : on the fading half of Vijayan / E.P. UNNY -- The literary get-togethers of Delhi / P. Govinda Pillai ; translated by E.V. RAMAKRISHNAN -- Vijayan 1975-2005 : progressive erosion of Black humour and laughter / Anand ; translated by E.V. Ramakrishnan -- O.V. Vijayan : death and afterlife of a writer / M. Mukundan -- Remembering my brother / Ov. Usha -- The lean young man / Kamala Das ; translated by Shyma P. -- 'We can never accept that a black man can say something original' : a conversation with O.V. Vijayan / Akbar Kakkattil ; translated by K.C. Muraleedharan -- The lion in winter : an interview with O.V. Vijayan / Rajeev Srinivasan -- 'Writing in English is like wanting a new set of parents' : a dialogue on language with O.V. Vijayan.

"O.V. Vijayan (1930-2005) was an acclaimed Malayalam novelist, short story writer, cartoonist, translator, columnist, political analyst and public intellectual. In a literary career spanning almost half a century, he published six novels, twelve volumes of short stories, eight volumes of non-fictional prose, three volumes of reminiscences, three volumes of cartoons and four self-translations. This book offers a comprehensive understanding of O.V. Vijayan's work by analysing his fictional and non-fictional works, cartoons, and columns, and situates him in the context of Malayalam literary culture and Indian literature at large. The volume discusses themes such as the politics of everyday life; culture, religion and the changing nature of Indian society; struggles of a writer and thinker; the idea of socially responsive radical modernism; ecology and subculture; and the politics of self-translation. These readings explore Vijayan's legacy as an iconic figure of modernism in Malayalam fiction who reinvented its language; as an unrelenting critic of the modern nation-state and its excesses; as a post-colonial thinker ; and as a visionary who transcended the binaries of the mundane and the magical, the political and the spiritual and the premodern and the postmodern. Part of the Writer in Context series, this book will be useful for scholars and researchers of Indian literature, Malayalam literature, English literature, comparative literature, postcolonial studies, cultural studies, global south studies and translation studies"--