Saroja and Kumaresan are young and in love. After meeting in a small southern Indian town, where Kumaresan works at a soda bottling shop, they quickly marry before returning to Kumaresan's family village to build a new life together. But they are harbouring a dangerous secret: Saroja is from a different caste than Kumaresan, and if the villagers find out, they will both be in grave peril. Faced with venom from her mother-in-law, and questions from her new neighbours, Saroja tries to adjust to a lonely and uncomfortable life, while Kumaresan struggles to scrape together enough money for them to start over somewhere new. Will their love keep them safe in a hostile world?

"Perumal Murugan is one of India's best-known literary novelists, and Pyre is beautifully done... The title promises a dramatic conclusion, and the book delivers" - Guardian

"Murugan's fictional villages are places full of quiet menace, where caste boundaries are protected with violence and social exclusion . . . [Pyre is] so tense it leaves you gasping for air" - New York Times

"The sense of disquieting intrusion and judgement moving into view is palpable... Restrained, clear...intimacy and creating, for the reader, an overwhelming feeling of pathos" - Irish Times

"Beneath the novel's bucolic façade lies a festering tension that breeds fear, violence, and complicity. Above all, Pyre is a reminder that, in the suffocating intimacy of a community, horror's truest form can be that of "a cluster of averted faces"" - Times Literary Supplement

"Murugan's Pyre is haunted by its title-a word that appears nowhere in the novel, but contributes to the growing sense of dread and desperation that shadows it...very readable... The translation succeeds in reminding the reader of the work's non-Western, multilingual setting, without compromising the fluency of the narrative." - New York Times Book Review

"Pyre glows with as much power as [One Part Woman] did, and adds immeasurable value to contemporary Indian literature . . . a book marked with the same quality of luminous integrity and beauty seen in One Part Woman . . . Aniruddhan translates with a fine ear that preserves beautifully the music of the original . . . a hard and glittering gem of a story'" - The Hindu

"An acclaimed writer in his native India, Murugan skillfully contrasts the young couple's innocence with the increasingly caustic attacks on their marital union. His spare prose mesmerizes, and Vasudevan's translation of the original Tamil conveys both meaning and needed context for Western English readers . . . Murugan shows that intolerance, cruelty, and bigotry are universal traits of humankind, even while tailored to the peculiarity of each society. Universal too, are the love, kindness, and familial bonds that exist between individuals who have the sensitivity to look beyond societal custom and coercion. A haunting story of forbidden love set in Southern India that illustrates the cruel consequences of societal intolerance" - Kirkus Reviews, starred review

"A powerful fable of star-crossed lovers and societal intolerance . . . Murugan describes rural life in piercing detail . . . The simple, elegant prose of Vasudevan's translation ranges from poetic to suspenseful . . . Murugan deserves worldwide recognition" - Publishers Weekly, starred review

"A Romeo & Juliet fable, centered not on family rivalry but on caste" - Arts Fuse

"With exquisitely honed details, Murugan vividly exposes society's blind adherence to draconian traditions" - Booklist

"Murugan writes with a gentle, sensual tenderness that is unforgettable... bitterly haunting, a love story, and an indictment of those who hate with such staunch righteousness" - Business Standard

"The prose is deceptively simple and sparse. And yet it has the effect of hitting you hard like the blazing sun... will haunt the reader for a long time" - Indian Express

"The real fire in Pyre [lies] in Murugan's words . . . Aniruddhan Vasudevan [translates] the story of Pyre beautifully . . . With Pyre, Murugan places a love story at the centre of human confusion and regional literature at the centre of Indian mainstream writing" - Financial Express

"A poignant love story . . . Murugan vividly describes the dusty, beautiful landscape and through his characters gives us a peek into the daily struggles and joys of a different kind of life" - Femina

"** Praise for Perumal Murugan" - - **

"A major Indian writer" - New York Times

"Murugan is nothing if not a chronicler of the ordinary" - New Yorker

"Murugan works his themes with a light hand... It's not just the physical world Murugan describes so vividly - the way a cow clears its throat, for example - but the rural community, a village of 20 huts and a thousand ancient resentments, where there is no privacy and your neighbour's suffering can serve as your evening's entertainment... I'm hoping for a whole shelf of books from this writer" - New York Times on One Part Woman

"The Story of a Goat... jumps nimbly from fantasy to realism to parable... The effect is not so much escapist fantasy as existential reflection... The elegance of Murugan's simple tone will lull you deeper into his story" - Washington Post

"The sense of disquieting intrusion and judgement moving into view is palpable... Restrained, clear language... gives us access to Saroja's thoughts, connoting pained honesty and guileless intimacy and creating, for the reader, an overwhelming feeling of pathos." - Irish Times

"Perumal Murugan is one of India's best-known literary novelists, and Pyre is beautifully done... The title promises a dramatic conclusion, and the book delivers." - Guardian