"‘Cinema is your experience; your vision of life.'—Adoor Gopalakrishnan A couple living in defiance of society; trying to make ends meet; a rootless; rustic simpleton unaware of his responsibilities; a selfish; middle-aged man clinging to old feudal ways; an ex-revolutionary wasting himself; sleeping and eating and drinking; much to the disgust of his old comrades; a writer who finds the true meaning of love and freedom in prison; and a prostitute discovering love only to be separated from her lover by the guardians of society. Adoor Gopalakrishnan's characters are drawn from real people; real lives. His cinema manages to frame details that often escape our everyday glance; turning the mundane into the magical; the commonplace into the startling. Yet; very little is known about the auteur. In Adoor Gopalakrishnan: A Life in Cinema; the first authorized biography of the Dada Saheb Phalke Award winner; Gautaman Bhaskaran traces the ebbs and flows of the life of this enigmatic director. From his birth during the Quit India Movement to his lonely childhood at his uncles' house; from life at Gandhigram; where Adoor studied rural development; to his days and nights at the Pune Film Institute; and from his first film; Swayamvaram; to his latest; Oru Pennum Rantaanum; Bhaskaran's lucid narrative tracks the twists and turns of Gopalakrishnan's life; finding an uncommon man and a rare auteur."