MY FAVOURITES IN FICTION

I have been reading mostly novels for some time now, though I always did read novels.My special favourites have been Dostoevsky,Nikos Kasantzakis,Italo Calvino, Gabriel Garcia Marquez and JMCoetzee. I also like Milan Kundera,Orhan Pamuk,Kader Abdolah,Mark Haddon,Jonathan Saffron Foyer,Dave Eggers,Haruki Murakami,Khaled Hosseini,Jose Saramago, Mario Vargas Llosa and Zadie Smith and others.When I read a novelist I try to read all their available works-available in English.Now I have just finished reading The Bad Girl by Llosa and am on Coetzee's The Diary of A Bad Year.The Bad Girl has great narrative force and the portrayal of the central character, a Chilean girl who keeps changing her identity, is fascinating.I enjoy reading such novels; still I will not compare them , say, with Dostoevsky or Kazantzakis. Some novels I liked are Hosseini's Kite Runners,Coetzee's Disgrace,Elizabeth Costello and Slow Man, Foyer's Everything is Illuminated and Extremely Loud and Incredibley Close, Llosa's Feast of the Goat,Edgardo Rodriguez Julia's The Renunciation, Pamuk's Snow and Saramago's The Cave.I like Murakami's stories like The Elephant Vanishes than his novels , other story writers I like most are Kafka, Calvino and Borges.When I compare our writers with these masters I feel often a bit depressed.Perhaps it is not right to make such comparisons; still I can count the novels and I admire in Malayalam on my fingers though our short story is doing better.I like stories hat spire to poetry, hence my love of Borges and Calvino, or Zacharia and NSMadhavan, and some stories by Subhash Chandran like Thalpam and by Santosh Echikanam like that Pedro Paramo story. .Among the older ones, Basheer , of course, with his Poovan Pazham and Mathilukal, and some early stories by TPatmanabhan and later stories by MTVasudevan Nair. In between there are writers like Mukundan,Madhavikkutty and Setu who are uneven, but have some excellent tales to tell.T.R. is a special favourite, I consider Jassockine Kollaruthu(Don't Kill Jassock) to be one of the finest stories in any language. MPNarayanaPillai was a wonder too especially with his Murukan enna Pambatti(Murukan, the Snake-Charmer).Among the novels, yes, I like Sundarikalum Sundaranmarum( The Beautiful and the Handsome) by Uroob,Khasakkinte Itihasam (The Legends of Khasak) by OVVijayan and Lunthen Batheriyile Lutheeniyakal (The Littanies of the Dutch Battery)by NSMadhavan.CRParameswaran's Prakritiniyamam(The Rule of Nature) that I like is but an extended short sory.TVKochubava's Vriddha sadanam( The Old Age Home) and KPRamanunni's Sufi Paranja Katha (The Tale Told by a Sufi)also deserve mention.Mukundan's Mayyazhippuzhayude Theerangalil,(On the Banks of River Mayyazhi) Punathil Kunhabdulla's Smaraka Silakal (Tombstones) and Sethu's Pandavapuram also deserve mention.