Chemmeen, meaning prawn, is set among the Hindu fishing community of the Kerala coast. Karuthamma, daughter of the ambitious fisherman Chembankunju, has loved Pareekutty, a young Muslim fish trader, since childhood. Her community lives by a belief that the sea-goddess protects fishermen at sea only while their wives on shore remain chaste, and a marriage across faiths is unthinkable.
Chembankunju's hunger to own a boat and net leads him to borrow from Pareekutty and then exploit him, while Karuthamma is married off to Palani, an orphaned fisherman from another village. Thakazhi shows the economics of the shore as clearly as the romance: the credit, the catches, the jealousy and gossip, the tightly policed customs that hold a vulnerable community together and also crush individuals within it.
Published in 1956, the novel won the Sahitya Akademi Award in 1957 and became one of the first modern Indian novels widely translated abroad, with a UNESCO-supported English version by V. K. Narayana Menon. Ramu Kariat's 1965 film was the first South Indian film to win the President's Gold Medal. The book reads as a folk legend grafted onto social realism.
Book details
| Author | Thakazhi Sivasankara Pillai |
|---|---|
| First published | 1956 |
| Original language | Malayalam |
| Translated by | V. K. Narayana Menon |
| Genre | Classic |
| Type | Fiction |
| Pages (approx.) | 230 |
| Setting | Fishing villages of the Alappuzha coast, Kerala, mid twentieth century |
| Awards | Sahitya Akademi Award 1957 |
Themes
- Forbidden love
- Fishing community
- Myth and taboo
- Greed
- Fate
Who should read it
Readers who want a passionate love story rooted in the customs and economy of a real coastal community.