Perumal Murugan

Perumal Murugan (born 1966) is an Indian author, scholar and literary chronicler who writes in Tamil. He has written twelve novels, six collections of short stories and four anthologies of poetry. Five of his novels have been translated into English: Seasons of the Palm, which was shortlisted for the Kiriyama Prize in 2005, Current Show, Poonachi or the Story of a Goat, One Part Woman and Pookkuzhi (Pyre) He was a professor of Tamil at the Government Arts College in Salem Attur. Perumal Murugan was born in 1966 to a family of farmers who had small land holdings near Thiruchengodu, a town in Namakkal district, Tamil Nadu. His father, a farmer, supplemented the family's income by running a soda shop in a cinema theatre in Thiruchengode. Murugan began writing from his early age, and some of his early lyrics of children's songs were featured on programmes broadcast by All India Radio. Murugan initially studied Tamil literature both as an undergraduate, in Erode and as a postgraduate in Coimbatore. He went on to obtain an M.Phil. degree from Madras University in Tamil studies, and followed by a Ph.D. His doctoral thesis focused on the works of author R. Shanmugasundaram.