Doorways to Death; Two Novellas on Death and Rebirth

by Malayattoor Ramakrishnan, Prema Jayakumar (Translator)

Two gripping novellas on death and rebirth

The renowned author of Yakshi creates a complex and fascinating world in the two novellas translated here. In 'Born Again', Advocate Sekharan is a successful criminal lawyer, plagued by the memory of his tyrannical father who outwitted him even in death. In 'Mridula Prabhu', a painter called Mukundan struggles to discover his past and the truth about the mysterious and fascinating woman who haunts his life—is she his wife, his mother or an enchantress...?

Reading Malayatoor Ramakrishnan is like journeying through a mysterious landscape which has no recognizable signposts. Truth, reality and sanity are all questioned when he delves into the psyche of his characters, making the experiences of their lives remarkable, and yet, somewhere, truly universal.

200 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1995

About the author

Malayattoor Ramakrishnan was born on 30 May 1927 as K. V. Ramakrishna Iyer in Kalpathi in Palakkad (Palghat) in a family of Kerala Iyers.
After earning the B.L. degree he started his career as an Advocate.Later he started his work as a sub-editor in The Free Press Journal in Mumbai. He was a contributing cartoonist to Shankar's Weekly. He is also credited with the first Malayalam translation of Bram Stoker's Dracula apart from translating Sherlock Holmes novels into Malayalam.
In 1957, he entered the Indian Administrative Service (IAS).The memoirs of his long career as a bureaucrat are narrated in his work Service Story – Ente IAS Dinangal.
alayattoor wrote his best known work - Verukal (Roots) in 1965. It is a semi-autobiographical work which tells the story of a family of Tamil speaking Iyers who settled in Kerala. This won him the Kerala Sahithya Academy Award.[1] In 1981, he resigned from the Indian Administrative Service in order to devote his time to writing. It was during the period 1981 to 1997 that his most famous works emerged from his pen. Among his other famous novels are Yakshi, Yanthram, Nettoor Mathom and Amritham Thedi. For Yanthram, he was awarded the Vayalar Award.