History and Imagination: Tamil Culture in the Global Context

by R. Cheran (Editor), Darshan Ambalavanar (Editor), Chelva Kanaganayakam (Editor)

Cultural Writing. Essays. Literary Criticism. Asian Studies. Edited by R. Cheran, Darshan Ambalavanar and Chelva Kanaganayakam. Tamils, originating in South India and Sri Lanka, constitute a large part of the diasporic South Asians in Canada, as well as the United States, Australia, and Europe. Many of them have fled the civil war in Sri Lanka. This rupture in the physical and imaginative landscape of the Tamils is undoubtedly reflected in their cultural production and has led to a renewal of their traditional aesthetics, which, in the words of the editors, "no longer adequately [capture] the richness or complexity of Tamil social and creative experience." This collection covers a broad range of topics relating to Tamil culture in the world, all of them examining the ancient traditional aesthetics and how they relate to a layered modern reality. This book is therefore of special relevance to the concerns of multiculturalism and globalization.

200 pages, Paperback

First published March 10, 2007

About the author

Cheran Rudhramoorthy [Tamil : சேரன் உருத்திரமூர்த்தி] (b. 1960, Alaveddy [alaveddi], Sri Lanka ) is a Tamil poet, playwright, journalist and professor. He is the author of more than 15 books in Tamil, and of three plays in English. He also co-edited an anthology of Tamil political poetry. In his works, he deals with the themes of identity, ethnicity, nationalism , emigration and violence.

Cheran has received several awards for literature and human rights , including the English PEN, Freedom to Write Award (2013), the University of Toronto International Poetry Award (2007), the Human Rights Witness Award, Montreal , 1998 ), and the Sri Lankan National Prize for Best Poetry (1994).

His works have been translated into 16 languages ​​including English , Arabic , Bengali , Chinese , French , German , Spanish , Indonesian , Japanese, Kannada , Malayalam , Dutch , Sinhala , Swedish, and Telugu .