The story of a goat : a novel

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Title:

The story of a goat : a novel

Author:

Perumā?murukan̲, author.

Uniform Title:

Punacci allatu Oru vellattin katai. English

ISBN:

9780802147516

Edition:

1st Grove Atlantic paperback ed.

Physical Description:

183 pages ; 21 cm.

General Note:

Originally published in Tamil as Poonachi Allathu Oru Vellattin Katai by Kalachuvadu Publications in 2016."--Title page verso.

"First published in English in 2018 by Context, an imprint of Westland Publications Private Limited."Title page verso.

Subject Term:

Goats -- Fiction.

Social classes -- India -- Fiction.

Rural families -- India -- Drama.

Geographic Term:

Tamil Nadu (India) -- Fiction.

Added Author:

Kalyan Raman, N.,

Summary:

A farmer in Tamil Nadu is watching the sun set over his village one evening when a mysterious stranger, a giant man, appears on the horizon. He offers the farmer a black goat kid who is the runt of the litter, surely too frail to survive. The farmer and his wife take care of the young she-goat, whom they name Poonachi, and soon the little goat is bounding with joy and growing prodigiously. Intoxicating passages from the goat's perspective offer a bawdy and earthy view of animal existence and a refreshing portrayal of the natural world. But Poonachi's life is not destined to be a rural idyll-dangers lurk around every corner, and may sometimes come from surprising places, including a government that is supposed to protect the weak and needy. With allegorical resonance for contemporary society and examining hierarchies of caste and color, The Story of a Goat is a provocative but heartwarming fable from a world-class storyteller. --

Language Note:

TRANSLATED FROM TAMIL.

Holds:

Available:*

Library	Call Number	Status
Searching... Oakdale Library	FICTION PER	Searching... Unknown
Searching... R.H. Stafford Library (Woodbury)	FICTION PER	Searching... Unknown

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Summary

LONGLISTED FOR THE NATIONAL BOOK AWARD FOR TRANSLATED LITERATURE

From one of India's best-known writers and the author of the National Book Award-longlisted One Part Woman comes a charming and surprising tale of an orphaned goat and the family that decides to take care of her, despite the potential cost to them.

As he did in the award-winning One Part Woman, in his newest novel, The Story of a Goat, Perumal Murugan explores a side of India that is rarely considered in the West: the rural lives of the country's farming community. He paints a bucolic yet sometimes menacing portrait, showing movingly how danger and deception can threaten the lives of the weakest through the story of a helpless young animal lost in a world it naively misunderstands.

As the novel opens, a farmer in Tamil Nadu is watching the sunset over his village one quiet evening when a mysterious stranger, a giant man who seems more than human, appears on the horizon. He offers the farmer a black goat kid who is the runt of the litter, surely too frail to survive. The farmer and his wife take care of the young she-goat, whom they name Poonachi, and soon the little goat is bounding with joy and growing at a rate they think miraculous for such a small animal. Intoxicating passages from the goat's perspective offer a bawdy and earthy view of what it means to be an animal and a refreshing portrayal of the natural world. But Poonachi's life is not destined to be a rural idyll--dangers can lurk around every corner, and may sometimes come from surprising places, including a government that is supposed to protect the weak and needy. Is this little goat too humble a creature to survive such a hostile world?

With allegorical resonance for contemporary society and examining hierarchies of caste and color, The Story of the Goat is a provocative but heartwarming fable from a world-class storyteller who is finally achieving recognition outside his home country.

Author Notes

PERUMAL MURUGAN is one of India's most well-known literary writers. He has written ten novels and five collections each of short stories and poetry. His best-known novel One Part Woman was longlisted for the inaugural National Book Award for Translation, and it won the prestigious ILF Samanvay Bhasha Samman for writing in Indian languages and the Translation Prize from India's National Academy of Letters.

Reviews (3)

Publisher's Weekly Review

This superbly fabulist tale from Murugan (One Part Woman) dives into the inner life and turmoil of a Asuras, a fictional farming village in rural India, through a small but determined goat and her unlikely caretakers. A large, mysticlike man gifts a rare black goat to an old farmer one day on his way home from the field. When the old farmer brings the malnourished goat home to his wife, she quickly gets to work caring for the goat, whom she names Poonachi. It's not an easy start for Poonachi, who must deal with the abuses of the village children, refuses to suckle, and is attacked by a tiger. But in the hands of the old woman, Poonachi eventually thrives alongside their older goats and becomes her inseparable companion. As Poonachi grows older, she learns that life is filled with struggle and suffering, but also that it holds moments of beauty and love. Anthropomorphic Poonachi lets readers into many of her thoughts and experiences, including a vibrant view of life under a government regime that banned black goats (which supposedly can't be seen in the dark) and oversaw long periods of famine and food rationing. Murugan explores the lively inner life of an observant goat in this imaginative exploration of rural life under the caste system. (Dec.)

Kirkus Review

A goat's life serves as an allegory for the human condition in this novel from an acclaimed Indian author (One Part Woman, 2018, etc.).Poonachi, the goat of the title, arrives the way characters often do in fairy tales: strangely, under circumstances fraught with portent. She's presented to an old man in a drought-stricken Indian village by a "giant" who needs "someone who will look after her properly." The goat is feeble and the old man's family is poor, but he and his wife nurse her with care. Still, life is always at least somewhat unstable: The government is nosy about Poonachi's provenance, other goats treat her like an outcast, and a wildcat abducts and nearly kills her. Fighting her way to survival only frees her to more sophisticated disappointments, including lost children and thwarted romance; Murugan deftly sketches out a nanny-meets-billy, nanny-loses-billy scenario that's as affecting as many human tales of unrequited love. Which is the point: In anthropomorphizing Poonachi, Murugan finds a path to describe the essence of humans' struggle to survive while grasping for fleeting moments of joy and grace. Murugan can be openly comic about this, as when he satirizes the endless bureaucratic lines goats and their keepers endure. But he's mostly straight-faced, in the tradition of George Orwell's Animal Farm, a similar allegorical tale; translator Raman notes the connection to the classic, and, as with Orwell, the story is straightforward as a fable while open to interpretation. In its closing pages, the novel returns to its more mystical roots, and while it gives nothing away to say that the story is ultimately tragicfrom the start, Poonachi's life is a study in precariousnessMurugan subtly pays tribute to our capacity to stubbornly endure under the most difficult circumstances.An affecting modern fable reflecting Murugan's enchanting capacity to make a simple story resonate on many levels. Copyright Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.

Booklist Review

Success nearly killed Murugan. Longlisted for the 2018 National Book Award for Translated Literature, his cult novel, One Part Woman, was viciously condemned and publicly burnt in his native India for revealing the culture of his remote village to the outside world. Murugan declared himself dead on Facebook, but broke his silence after winning a landmark case granting artistic freedom. In a three-month burst, Murugan created his impossibly frail, all-black, newborn goat named Poonachi who ends up in the care of an elderly farming couple. The old woman is smitten, tenaciously encouraging Poonachi's survival. Murugan smoothly anglophone-enabled by award-winning Tamil translator Raman moves fluidly between human and animal viewpoints, from detailing the humans' relationship with their land and flock, to anthropomorphizing Poonachi's maturation from fragile survivor into playful kid, longing lover, even miraculous mother. Yet as pastoral as this story seems, Murugan's multilayered intentions prove far more admonitory. Poonachi is more daughter with all the limitations of womanhood thrust upon her than livestock. Beyond the fields, a regime looms, fear controls, and societal rigidity rules as Murugan adroitly transforms his caprine idyll into cautionary chronicle.--Terry Hong Copyright 2019 Booklist

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Summary

Summary

Author Notes

Reviews (3)

Publisher's Weekly Review

Kirkus Review

Booklist Review

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