HUNGER

HUNGER

VAIKOM MUHAMMAD BASHEER

Editor: M.N Karassery

One can very well trace the beginnings of Modernism in Malayalam literature to Basheer and also see elements of what has come to be called the ‘post-Modern’ in his narrative strategies, especially the meta-narrative mode and the parodic approach to history that one may find in a Samuel Beckett, Robbe – Grillet or Salman Rushdie… Critics have compared Kafka’s ‘Hunger Artist’ with Basheer’s Janmadinam (The Birth day) as also Jimenez’s ‘Platero and I’ with Basheer’s Pathummayude Aadu (Pathumma’s Goat) in an attempt to prove he is both modern and universal. But Basheer’s modernism and his trans-national humanism came from his intense rootedness in the soil of his land and community and the hells and heavens he came across in his gipsy-like wanderings. – K. Satchidanandan