Pyre

Pyre is one of Perumal Murugan's most beloved and popular books in his native India. Penguin India's English language translation from the original Tamil further broadened his audience of eager fans for this novel, an indelible portrait of a marriage strained by convention and the expectations of the rural community surrounding it. Perumal Murugan is one of the most important living writers in India, having garnered both critical acclaim and commercial success for his work. Grove has published two of his previous novels, The Story of a Goat and One Part Woman. One Part Woman and The Story of a Goat were both longlisted for the National Book Award for Translated Literature, each book having been translated by a different translator. Since the prize was reintroduced in 2018, the only other author who has been twice recognized is Olga Tokarczuk. Parul Seghal is a particular fan of Murugan and selected The Story of a Goat as a New York Times Critic's Top 10 Book of 2020. She reviewed both novels in the daily New York Times, and wrote in her review of One Part Woman, "I'm hoping for a whole shelf of books from this writer." Murugan has also been positively reviewed by Ron Charles, Laila Lalami, and the New Yorker, among others. The Story of a Goat was furthermore named a New York Times Book Review Paperback Row Selection and named "A Best Book to Gift" by the Los Angeles Times, which praised it as "heartrending." Murugan has twice been the subject of major profiles in the United States. Most recently he was profiled by Amitava Kumar for the New Yorker in late 2019, and Ellen Barry discussed the controversy surrounding One Part Woman in the New York Times in 2016. His profile will only continue to grow with this new novel. Murugan attended the Brooklyn Book Festival in 2018, sitting on a panel entitled "The Fragility of Families" with Héctor Abad and Preti Taneja. Murugan was recently elected one of the Vice Presidents of PEN International, joining a list of international luminaries that includes Margaret Atwood, Toni Morrison, and J.M. Coetzee.