Shunya: A Novel
A mysterious stranger turns up unannounced in a drowsy corner of suburban Kerala. He goes by Shunya, meaning zero, and from the very start his nature resists easy explanation. Is he unhinged? A trickster? Something darker, or something far more sacred? Nobody can quite say. He takes up residence in a modest cottage behind the local toddy shop, where he tells parables, dispenses blessings and curses with equal composure, drinks cup after cup of black tea, and exists entirely on his own terms. Occasionally, he draws out a worn bamboo-reed flute and plays something that seems to reach straight into the chest. Then, as quietly as he came, he disappears, leaving behind only questions and the faint suggestion of a new beginning. Sri M's first novel is a contemplative, stripped-back piece of fiction that blurs the line between the tangible and the imagined, the bounded and the boundless. It's less a conventional story than a sustained meditation on absence itself, on what 'shunya' (nothingness) actually contains. The prose is spare, the wisdom patient rather than showy. Readers drawn to fiction that sits with big questions, without rushing to answer them, will find this quietly rewarding.
- Author: Sri M
- Publisher: Penguin
- Genre: Horror
- ISBN: 978-0143458609
- Pages: 232 pages