Multiple Avatars of Indian Women
Anita Balakrishnan
GENESIS: SELECT STORIES by Lakshmi Kannan Orient BlackSwan, Hyderabad, 2014, 228 pp., 350
May 2014, volume 38, No 5

Lakshmi Kannan’s volume of translated short stories contains selections from her previously published stories. In the author’s note Kannan explains her reasons for choosing these stories: they were the ones that elicited the strongest reactions amongst her readers and often generated controversy.

Lakshmi Kannan focuses her gaze primarily on Indian women in their various avatars: daughter, wife, mother, student, working professional, though some of the stories do have male protagonists. In most of the stories, she reveals her characters negotiating the schism between traditional expectations regarding women and the new possibilities precipitated by modernity.

Continue reading this review