MOHANASWAMY
- 1
- New York Harper 2016/01/01
- 271
Much like the great James Baldwin, the acclaimed Kannada writer Vasudhendra has transformed his personal experience of bigotry, shame and tragedy into harrowing but magnificent truth-telling. His work will leave you impatient with other writers.’ -Siddharth Dube, author of No One Else. Mohanaswamy has just lost his long-time partner, Karthik, to a woman. Even as he scrutinizes himself, the choices he’s made, the friends and lovers he’s gained and lost, Mohanaswamy dreams of living a simple, dignified life. A life that would allow him to leave, even forget, the humiliation and fears of adolescence, the slurs his mind still carries around – gandu sule, hennu huli – and the despair that made him crave to conform. A coming out of the closet for Vasudhendra himself, these stories of homosexual love and lives jolted Kannada readers out of their notions of the literary and the palatable. The gritty narratives of Mohanaswamy explore sexuality, urbanization and class with nuance and an unflinching honesty that will both unnerve and move readers in English, and serve as a fine introduction to one of the strongest voices in Kannada literature.