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Tell Me a Story about Our World
Using Fiction to Interrogate One’s Past, Present and Future
Speakers
A single family. A small village. An entire nation’s story hiding inside.
Tell Me A Story About Our World brings together academic and translator Vanamala Viswanatha and novelist Kavery Nambisan for a conversation about the art of fiction and storytelling, based on Nambisan’s latest novel, Rising Sons. Set in a village in Karnataka, following one family from pre-independent India through to the 1970s, threading through the complexities of caste and colonialism while painting vivid landscapes of rural and urban life in a bygone era.
What makes Rising Sons sing is how Nambisan inhabits her world. Kannada coexists comfortably within the English, not as a novelty but as a force of realism, enabling the reader’s sensibility to percolate through society at every level. Then there is the narrator: never formally introduced, yet unmistakably present, speaking of “our village” and “our daily lives” with a voice that is not quite impartial. The resulting text reads as both narration and remembrance, an immersion into a carefully crafted world.
The stories we tell are as much about the Word as they are about the World. Expect an interesting and illuminating conversation, followed by a Q&A with the audience.
Speakers
Kavery Nambisan
Kavery Nambisan has written seven novels including The Scent of Pepper, On Wings of Butterflies and A Town Like Ours. She has also written several works of non-fiction including a medical memoir titled A Luxury Called Health and Cherry Red, Cherry Black: The Coffee Story. She was a Fellow at the International Writers Workshop in the University of Iowa in 2007 and was also one of the thirteen writers from various countries invited to Greece for a Fullbright-sponsored symposium on “Home/Homelands” in 2008. A trained surgeon, she has worked in rural areas in Bihar, UP, Tamil Nadu and Karnataka. Kavery was married to the late poet and writer Vijay Nambisan.
Image credit: Joseph Kozhithara
Vanamala Viswanatha
An independent scholar and translator, Vanamala Viswanatha has taught English language and literature for over four decades in premier institutions in Bengaluru. She has translated into English well-known Kannada writers such as UR Ananthamurthy, Sara Aboobacker, Lankesh, and Vaidehi. The Life of Harishchandra (Harvard University Press, 2017), her translation of a medieval Kannada poetic classic, has been published by the Murty Classical Library of India. A Translation Fellow at Ashoka University, her current work includes the translation of Vaddaradhane, a 10th century Jain text in Kannada (forthcoming Harvard University Press); Tolpady’s essay collection Meditating on the Mahabharata, and Kuvempu’s novel Bride in the Hills. (both for Penguin Random House).
Image credit: M Sreedhara Murthy
