On the Far Side of Memory

Short Stories of Lalithambika Antharjanam

Housewife by day, daring writer at night, seated on the bare floor, this thinker of gender engaged with the thriving social and community reform movements of early-mid twentieth century Malayali society. The first prominent voice who spoke on behalf of women, the first startling insights that represented the struggle against the repression of the women of the Namboodiri Brahmin community, Lalithambika Antharjanam’s stories cover half a century of her engagement with caste, gender, and nationalist uprisings. In writing some of the founding texts of feminism in Kerala, she made powerful feminist interventions into literary realism in Kerala. Relatively unknown outside Kerala and yet to receive the critical attention that is her due, this book seeks to resurrect Lalithambika as a feminist public intellectual.