Book Review

"Maoist", the very label is provocative in India nowadays, with the Naxalites back in the news on a depressingly regular basis. For an entire generation of Indians, however, the term has very little meaning, and almost no cultural or economic context.

The term is just a term. The news is just news. Fiction, then, must bring the reader up-to-date on what this "Maoist threat" is about. Is C P Surendran the writer for the job? This is the book to judge by.

It is the tale of a Maoist in Kerala who finds his revolutionary outfit, Red Earth, getting crushed by the unrelenting power of the state, but is motivated individually by a personal tragedy""a buddy's death in police custody""as much as or perhaps more than Maoist ideology.

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AN IRON HARVEST

C P Surendran
Rs 350
326 pages
IndiaInk