Where God Began - Appadurai Muttulingam (Translated by Kavitha Muralidharan)

A blistering, deeply compassionate account of a young man in exile against the violent backdrop of the Sri Lankan Civil War. Written by one of Sri Lanka’s foremost contemporary Tamil writers, Where God Began is a profound exploration of what it truly means to lose one's home, identity, and history.

At the absolute peak of the civil war, Nishant’s parents suspect their young son is becoming dangerously entangled with the Tamil Tigers liberation movement. Desperate to save his life, they make the gut-wrenching decision to liquidate their ancestral land to fund his illegal immigration across global borders toward the promised safe haven of Canada. What follows is a harrowing, high-stakes human odyssey. Nishant is traded like cargo from one underground human trafficker to another, smuggled across treacherous terrain, and repeatedly turned back at tightly fortified borders. Along the way, he finds himself trapped alongside a sprawling, multi-ethnic network of dispossessed refugees fleeing similar conflicts across South Asia and Africa.

While historical fiction frequently spotlights the horrors left behind or the struggles of final asylum, master novelist Appadurai Muttulingam focuses his lens entirely on the complex, liminal realities of the illegal transit itself. Translated seamlessly into English by veteran bilingual journalist Kavitha Muralidharan, this powerful novel utilizes unexpected, dryly sarcastic humor tempered with deep empathy to capture the resilience of the human spirit under extreme duress. It is an indispensable read for anyone interested in political history, South Asian literature, and deeply moving personal narratives of displacement.

Where God Began by Appadurai Muttulingam

₹425.00

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Why This Modern Literary Masterpiece Belongs in Your Collection:

• Uncompromising Historical Backdrop: Offers a stark, deeply authentic look into the human cost of the Sri Lankan civil war and the systemic realities of global refugee networks.

• Masterful Literary Translation: Translated by acclaimed journalist Kavitha Muralidharan, preserving the lyrical nuances, emotional gravity, and dark wit of Muttulingam’s original Tamil prose.

• Unique Narrative Voice: Uses sharp, dryly humorous observation rather than pure melodrama to underscore the devastating absurdities of borders and bureaucratic survival.