"Jeyamohan is one of India''s most resourceful makers of literary art" Pankaj Mishra I t is 1878, and Aiden Byrne, an Irish police officer in Madrasapatnam, loyal servant to the crown and Queen Victoria, knows that there is no danger that he ought to fear in this heatblasted and famine-devastated land. But when he discovers two laborers from Tudor Ice Company being brutally whipped in the countryside, he is dragged into a world whose surface he has only skimmed before. He sees the horrific conditions under which the local workers, members of the lowest rung of the caste system, process the mammoth blocks of ice that are carved out of frozen New England lakes and transported to India for use in the drinks and iceboxes of the colonial forces. When the two workers disappear, Byrne is approached a charismatic young activist belonging to a lower caste, who is looking to put things right. He sets Byrne off on a journey that brings him face-to-face with the terrible toll of the famine raging through the countryand forces him to grapple with his own precarious and complicated role in the machinery of empire. A dazzling postcolonial inversion of Heart of Darkness set during the Great Indian Famine of 1878 White Elephant is a searing account of a crucial moment in the history of a nation, a city, and a people. Translated from the Tamil by Priyamvada Ramkumar

Autorentext

Jeyamohan is a Tamil writer and literary critic based in Nagercoil, India. One of India's finest authors writing today, his work examines and reinterprets India's rich literary and classical traditions. A prolific writer, his output includes multiple novels, short stories, volumes of literary criticism, writer biographies, introductory texts to Indian and Western literature, books on philosophy, and numerous other translations and collections.

Klappentext

"Jeyamohan is one of India's most resourceful makers of literary art" PANKAJ MISHRA
**
Our understanding of contemporary India is incomplete without reading Jeyamohan" VIVEK SHANBHAG, author of Ghachar Ghochar**
**
The year is 1878 and the south of India is in the grip of a devastating famine.**

Aiden Byrne, an Irish police officer and loyal servant to the Crown, encounters two laborers being brutally whipped by the roadside. Their tormentor is an overseer from the Tudor Ice Company, where mammoth blocks of ice, harvested from frozen New England lakes, are broken down for British banquets by workers from the lowest rung of the caste system.

When those same laborers are found murdered, Aiden and Kathavarayan, a charismatic young activist, set out on a journey that brings them face-to-face with the bloody toll of the famine raging through the country. Once so fearless in this heat-blasted land, Aiden will now be forced to grapple with his own precarious role in the machinery of empire.

A vivid reimagining of the first labor uprising in modern Indian history, White Elephant is a soul-searing novel by one of India's greatest living writers, offering a stirring, indelible argument against the pitiless march and corrupting influence of empire.

Translated from the Tamil by Priyamvada Ramkumar