About the Book

NEW IN PAPERBACK, THIS EDITION INCLUDES A NOTE BY THE TRANSLATOR, NANDINI KRISHNAN
Late at night, Kumarasurar’s phone rings shrilly.
His teenage son is calling.
What could he want? A seemingly simple demand torments Kumarasurar, who fears it might put his finances—and perhaps his son’s life—in jeopardy. As a father’s anxieties unravel, his memories undermine his self-worth and imaginary scenes of damnation taunt him.
Estuary brings alive the different ways—absurd and endearing by turns—in which a man and his young son navigate the contemporary world. In the process, it peels back the layers of Kumarasurar’s loneliness: the hurt of a married man whose wife cares only for the happiness of their child, the endless monotony of an office job and the struggle of the salaried middle-class to give their children the best chance of success.
Perumal Murugan’s latest novel, his first in an urban setting, is also a razor-sharp parody of everything from e-commerce to the fitness industry, art appreciation to political manipulation, cram schools to social networks. Through a meditative exploration of a father’s emotional landscape, Murugan tells of a world wrecked by unchecked consumerism and an obsession with growth, where technology overrides common sense and degrees don’t guarantee education. And, with characteristic tenderness, he also weaves in a way to redemption.

About the Author

Perumal Murugan is the International Booker longlisted author of eleven novels, five collections of short stories, five anthologies of poetry and a collection of personal essays in Tamil. Three of his novels translated into English—Poonachi: Or the Story of a Black Goat, Trial by Silence and A Lonely Harvest—were shortlisted for the JCB Prize for Literature in 2018 and 2019. His other novels translated into English include Seasons of the Palm, shortlisted for the Kiriyama Prize in 2005, Pyre, Current Show and One Part Woman. His first non-fiction book Amma, was translated and published in 2019.

About the Translator

Nandini Krishnan is the author of Hitched: The Modern Woman and Arranged Marriage and Invisible Men: Inside India’s Transmasculine Networks. She has translated two of Perumal Murugan’s works into English: Estuary and Four Strokes of Luck. She was shortlisted for the PEN Presents translation prize 2022 and the Ali Jawad Zaidi Memorial Prize for translation from Urdu 2022. She is an alumna of the Writer’s Bloc playwrights’ workshop by the Royal Court Theatre, London. Her novel-in-manuscript was a winner of the Caravan Writers of India Festival contest and showcased at the Writers of the World Festival, Paris, 2014. She is currently working on a new translation of Ponniyin Selvan by Kalki.