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Book

Hanging by a Thread

Hanging By The Thread Book

Hanging by a Thread

By Tho Mu Ragunathan

Category: Historical Fiction Books, SOCIO-POLITICAL COMMENTARY, Thornbird Books
ISBN: 978-81-19626-21-2
Translated by: P.C. Ramakrishna

Tho Mu Si Ragunathanโ€™s novel Panjum Pasiyum is set in the 1950s in Tamil Nadu. Its realistic depiction of the plight of handloom weavers makes it a significant work of its times. The weavers had to face competition with mill cloth, high prices of yarn due to import of expensive cotton from USA, accumulation of handloom stock caused by stagnation in exports, unscrupulous merchants and the apathy of the government.

The human aspects of the story are brought in by the families of Thathulinga Mudaliar, an exploitative businessman, and Kailasa Mudaliar, who is in debt to the former. The stories of their children Sankar, Kamala and Mani and how the weavers of Madurai and Ambasamudram organise and protest against the government to seek their rights, make for stirring reading.

In Hanging by a Thread the travails of the weavers, the socio-political movements of the time and the human interest stories interweave in a fluent translation. The different strands of the plot culminate in a victorious procession of the weavers of Ambasamudram seeking their rights from the government

Hanging by a Thread AIS (Advanced Information Sheet)

Hanging by a Thread
Tho Mu Ragunathan

Tho Mu Si Ragunathan (1923โ€“2001) was a Tamil writer, translator, journalist and literary critic. His first short story appeared in Prasanda Vikatan in 1941. His first novella Puyal was published in 1945, and his literary criticism Ilakkiya Vimarsanam in 1948. Panjum Pasiyum (Cotton and Hunger) was published in 1951. It was translated into Czech and sold 50,000 copies within weeks. During 1954โ€“56, he ran the progressive literary monthly Shanthi. In the mid-1960s he joined Soviet Land Publications, where he translated many Russian works into Tamil. He received the Soviet Land Nehru Award for Thai (1965) and for Lenin Kavithaanjali (1970). He was awarded the Sahitya Akademi Award (1983) for his literary criticism Bharathi: Kalamum Karuthum.

Size: 140 mm x 216 mm
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