Meena Kandasamy – författare

SHORTLISTED FOR THE WOMEN'S PRIZE FOR FICTION 2018LONGLISTED FOR THE DYLAN THOMAS PRIZE 2018SHORTLISTED FOR THE JHALAK PRIZE 2018A GUARDIAN BOOK OF THE YEARA DAILY TELEGRAPH BOOK OF THE YEARAN OBSERVER BOOK OF THE YEARA FINANCIAL TIMES BOOK OF THE YEAR'Courageous and brave and disturbing and will stay with you for a long time' -- StylistCaught in the hook of love, a young woman marries a dashing university professor. She moves to a rain-washed coastal town to be with him, but behind closed doors she discovers that her perfect husband is a perfect monster. As he sets about battering her into obedience and as her family pressures her to stay in the marriage, she swears to fight back - a resistance that will either kill her or set her free.

From the author of When I Hit You, shortlisted for the 2018 Women's Prize for FictionKarim and Maya:[x] share a home [x] worry about money [x] binge-watch films [x] argue all the time Karim, a young film-maker, carries with him the starry-eyed dreams of the Arab Revolution. Maya carries her own pressing concerns: an errant father, an unstable job, a chain-smoking habit, a sudden pregnancy. When Karim's brother disappears in Tunis, and Karim wants to go after him, Maya must choose between her partner and her home city, her future and her history...In a conversation between forms, fictions and truths, Exquisite Cadavers is a novel about a young couple navigating love in London, and a literary hall of mirrors about an author navigating the inspirations behind her work.___________________'An inventive fusion' Observer'A work of brilliance' Financial Times'Wonderful' LitHub

All disciplinea deception to hide the wildness, all symmetry an excuse for keeping count. Tomorrow Someone Will Arrest You cements Meena Kandasamy as one of the most exciting, radical thinkers at work today. These poems chronicle wanting, art-making, and the practising of resistance and solidarity in the face of a hostile state. Here, the personal is political, and Kandasamy moves between sex, desire, family and wider societal issues of caste, the refugee crisis, and freedom of expression with grace and defiance. This is a bold, unforgettable collection by a poet who compels us to sit up and listen.

THE WOMEN'S PRIZE-SHORTLISTED POET AND PROVOCATEURAn iconic, must-read novel of incels, influencers and AK-47s'Best book of the year' NUSSAIBAH YOUNIS'One of my books of the year' NICOLA STURGEON'Fearless and brilliant' LEMN SISSAY'One of the greats' NIKITA GILL'A South Asian feminist Uncut Gems' ASH SARKAR'Brilliant and brutal' PILAR QUINTANA'A tour de force' NIKESH SHUKLAI mute the audio. I replay the video four times.It is not me. It is my fucking face.Amrita Chaturvedi goes by Amy. Amy identifies as a communist on Twitter (her profile omits a stint on Big Brother and a billionaire daddy running the show at the High Court of Delhi).Then reality hits: a deepfake porno of her forwarded around by WhatsApp aunties goes viral. On her birthday, Amy wakes to a stoning in the digital town square that could cancel the likes of Kim Kardashian.Her executioners? A cartel of unhinged virgins styling themselves after V for Vendetta - except these keyboard warriors are on a ruthless crusade to wipe out desi jezebels and Make India Hindu Again.A muscular, monumental work of internet literature in which the online turns offline turns bloody, Fieldwork as a Sex Object is not a novel you read but a novel that reads you: what are you prepared to risk for what you claim to believe?'Fieldwork as a Sex Object will simultaneously shock and reel you in' VOGUE'One of the most urgent voices of tomorrow' HARPER'S BAZAAR'Kandasamy is fearless on the page' ESQUIRE'A one-woman, agitprop literary-political movement' INDEPENDENT'One of fiction's most fiery and unclassifiable' GUARDIAN

THE WOMEN'S PRIZE-SHORTLISTED POET AND PROVOCATEURAn iconic, must-read novel of incels, influencers and AK-47s'Best book of the year' NUSSAIBAH YOUNIS'One of my books of the year' NICOLA STURGEON'Fearless and brilliant' LEMN SISSAY'One of the greats' NIKITA GILL'A South Asian feminist Uncut Gems' ASH SARKAR'Brilliant and brutal' PILAR QUINTANA'A tour de force' NIKESH SHUKLAI mute the audio. I replay the video four times.It is not me. It is my fucking face.Amrita Chaturvedi goes by Amy. Amy identifies as a communist on Twitter (her profile omits a stint on Big Brother and a billionaire daddy running the show at the High Court of Delhi).Then reality hits: a deepfake porno of her forwarded around by WhatsApp aunties goes viral. On her birthday, Amy wakes to a stoning in the digital town square that could cancel the likes of Kim Kardashian.Her executioners? A cartel of unhinged virgins styling themselves after V for Vendetta - except these keyboard warriors are on a ruthless crusade to wipe out desi jezebels and Make India Hindu Again.A muscular, monumental work of internet literature in which the online turns offline turns bloody, Fieldwork as a Sex Object is not a novel you read but a novel that reads you: what are you prepared to risk for what you claim to believe?'Fieldwork as a Sex Object will simultaneously shock and reel you in' VOGUE'One of the most urgent voices of tomorrow' HARPER'S BAZAAR'Kandasamy is fearless on the page' ESQUIRE'A one-woman, agitprop literary-political movement' INDEPENDENT'One of fiction's most fiery and unclassifiable' GUARDIAN

THE WOMEN'S PRIZE-SHORTLISTED POET AND PROVOCATEURAn iconic, must-read novel of incels, influencers and AK-47s'Best book of the year' NUSSAIBAH YOUNIS'One of my books of the year' NICOLA STURGEON'Fearless and brilliant' LEMN SISSAY'One of the greats' NIKITA GILL'A South Asian feminist Uncut Gems' ASH SARKAR'Brilliant and brutal' PILAR QUINTANA'A tour de force' NIKESH SHUKLAI mute the audio. I replay the video four times.It is not me. It is my fucking face.Amrita Chaturvedi goes by Amy. Amy identifies as a communist on Twitter (her profile omits a stint on Big Brother and a billionaire daddy running the show at the High Court of Delhi).Then reality hits: a deepfake porno of her forwarded around by WhatsApp aunties goes viral. On her birthday, Amy wakes to a stoning in the digital town square that could cancel the likes of Kim Kardashian.Her executioners? A cartel of unhinged virgins styling themselves after V for Vendetta - except these keyboard warriors are on a ruthless crusade to wipe out desi jezebels and Make India Hindu Again.A muscular, monumental work of internet literature in which the online turns offline turns bloody, Fieldwork as a Sex Object is not a novel you read but a novel that reads you: what are you prepared to risk for what you claim to believe?'Fieldwork as a Sex Object will simultaneously shock and reel you in' VOGUE'One of the most urgent voices of tomorrow' HARPER'S BAZAAR'Kandasamy is fearless on the page' ESQUIRE'A one-woman, agitprop literary-political movement' INDEPENDENT'One of fiction's most fiery and unclassifiable' GUARDIAN

The Book of Desire is the award-winning (and Women's Prize-shortlisted) writer Meena Kandasamy's luminous translation of the Kamattu-p-pal, a 2000-year-old song of love and pleasure and the third part of the Thirukkural - one of the most important texts in Tamil literature. Written by the poet Thiruvalluvar, the Kamattu-p-pal section of the Thirukkural focuses on love and female sensuality. It is the most intimate section of this great work - and also, historically, the part that has been most heavily censored. Although hundreds of male translations of the text have been published, it has also only ever been translated by a woman once before. The Book of Desire is Meena's own feminist reclamation of the Kamattu-p-pal. With her trademark wit, lyricism and passionate insight, she weaves a magic spell: taking the reader on a journey through 250 kurals (short verses), organised under separate headings - 'The Pleasure of Sex', 'Renouncing Shame', 'The Delights of Sulking - the result is a fresh, vital, and breath-taking translation. This is a book that fizzes with energy, is full of delight - that conveys powerful messages about female sensuality, agency, and desire. It is a revolution 2000 years in the making.

A narrative of the early modern Indian sculpture known as the Mithuna couple.Meena Kandasamy writes about the Mithuna couple, a seventeenth-century ivory sculpture from Tamil Nadu, India, depicting lovers. Kandasamy unfurls a multi-layered, multi-directional narrative built from images, questions, and contradictions evoked by the sculpture. “How can we look at this work and not talk about who produced it?” Kandasamy asks and then examines how caste and class are carved into the object as indelibly as its physical details. Such knowledge complicates easy associations of love that may be evoked by the couple. Refusing any impulse to idealize or exoticize, Kandasamy connects the carving to personal and political stories that expose painful realities of who gets to love whom, and how. She sets the intimate alongside the institutional to interrogate terms such as decolonize, restitution, and preservation. Through an astonishing stylistic mix, including Twitter, academic discourse, poetry, and memoir, she talks back, forward, and sideways with the object.

Meena Kandasamy erzählt von dem Massaker in Kilvenami (Süd-Indien), bei dem 1968 vierundvierzig Dorfbewohner - landlose Dalit (›Unberührbare‹) - in einer Hütte verbrannt wurden. Sie hatten sich der Kommunistischen Partei angeschlossen und das Undenkbare gewagt: die Stimme zu erheben für eine halbe Portion Reis mehr am Tag. Der Roman bezeugt den Justizskandal, in dem Polize, Politiker und Richter zum Erhalt der Macht der Grundgesitzer beitrugen. Aber was heißt, Kandasamy erzählt? Kann sie das, die 16 Jahre nach dem Massaker Geborene, der die Geschichte nur durch mündliche Berichte, Zeitungsartikel und Gerichtsakten zugänglich ist? Kandasamy zerstört lustvoll alle Erwartungshaltungen an Form und Sprache, kokettiert nicht mit Exotismus oder geübtem Storytelling.