Born and brought up in Kerala, India, Veena Muthuraman studied at Carnegie Mellon University for her Master’s degree before moving to the U...
Born and brought up in Kerala, India, Veena Muthuraman studied at Carnegie Mellon University for her Master’s degree before moving to the UK to take up a corporate job. In between, she kept pursuing her passion for writing. Her debut work of fiction, a collection of short stories, A Place of No Importance, was published in 2016. Now, she has returned with The Great Anicut, a historical novel set in 1st century CE of Tamilkam in the Chola Kingdom. Muthuraman spoke to Scroll.in about her literary career, her new book , her interest in historical fiction and more. Excerpts from the interview:
How did your first work of fiction A Place Of No Importance come about? From what I can see, you haven’t studied literature at university or attended MFA programmes – how did you get into fiction writing and how did you learn the art?
A Place Of No Importance is a set of interlinked short stories set in a fictional village which is based on a real cluster of villages my parents grew up in and retain strong ties to. The villages evolved to the extent that the stories required them to, but pretty much all the stories – and most of the characters – in the book are...
