Konangi

Konangi (கோணங்கி) (born 1 November 1956) is the pen name of the Tamil writer Ilangovan.

He is the maternal grandson of the Tamil playwright, lyricist, writer and Freedom fighter Madurakavi Baskaradoss.

His father is the Tamil writer Shanmugam and his mother is Saraswathi.

His elder brother is the Tamil short-story writer Tamilselvan and his younger brother is Murugaboopathy a contemporary Tamil playwright.

He grew up in Naagalapuram, bodinayakanur and Nenmeni Mettupatti and he currently lives in Kovilpatti, Tamil Nadu.

Described as the most important Tamil voice since Pudumaipithan, Konangi has published six short story collections and three novels.

His works belongs to the less popular serious literature genre in Tamil which is mostly published in literary magazines and only occasionally in magazines and newspapers with wider circulation.

Konangi's first short story veechu (வீச்சு) was published in Thaamarai a Tamil magazine in 1980 and from then on he went to create some of the most original short stories in the Tamil language.

His stories are characterised by very dense images, a tight narrative style with a vocabulary like no other bringing a ritualistic shade to the use of the Tamil language.

His works often pushes and breaks the limits of fiction in Tamil literature by abandonment of the conventions of plot and character construction.

Konangi quit his job in March 1988 and started his own little magazine Kal Kudhirai in October 1988 in the Kalrayan Hills which continues to publish serious contemporary Tamil fiction, poetry, reviews and translations.

Konangi's earlier short stories dealt with the issues of Alienation, effects of Urbanisation in villages leading to farmer suicides, Childhood memories, Rural tales and other metaphysical themes.

He later experimented in fiction writing a wide range of genres including Surrealistic and Magical stories of dreamscapes.

His previous novels Paazhi dealt with Jainism and Pidhiraa dealt with a wide range of subjects using the reference of the five ancient Sangam landscapes.

Pidhira was released in 2004 and is largely a novel that was less denser and more accessible than the earlier work paazhi.

It had its sections based on the five Tamil sangam landscapes.

The first part 'mullai' was written as a fiction based on the travels in Andhra Pradesh.

His latest novel Tha was published in January 2013.

Despite receiving enormous acknowledgements for his literary outputs, Konangi stays away from the media.

Tha published in January 2013 (released in Dhanushkodi) is an enormous piece of imaginary work of lyrical prose which deals with the displacement of the north east Indians, Samaritans, Veenai Dhanammal,Tales from the Silappatikaram, The Music of His Master's Voice, Ancient Tamil music, Saraswathi Mahal Library, the Alipore Jail, the mythology of the Samaritans, the works of Socrates, the landscape of Nagapattinam, the mythological stories of Ravana, HMS Blake, Zen, Kalamkari paintings and other elements in a fictional universe called Tha.

The novel also contains allegories, folk tales, oral histories, ritual details, archetypes, fables, anecdotes, parables, tall tales, legends and ghost stories making it a diverse work.

Opposed to other novels in literature, Konangi has his own conventions in all aspects of the building of a novel.

His works are usually made up of fragments and it distorts the experience of its main characters, presenting events outside of chronological order and attempts to disrupt the idea of characters with unified and stable personalities.

It also has the characteristics of lack of an obvious plot, minimal development of character, variations in time sequence, experiments with vocabulary and syntax, and alternative endings and beginnings.

Due to these aspects his works are often thought to be incomprehensible and chaotic despite being implied the other way.

Sayings quoted below appeared in magazines and from his own works and interviews.