To read Historical fiction in my own mother tongue was something unique. I am not a stranger to this genre. My first tryst with this type of writing was some years back when I stumbled upon the novel - Vishakanyaka by S.K Pottakadu. The novel chronicles the life of immigrants from Travancore who got resettled in the western ghats i.e Wayanad. S.K cleverly creates a world of tryst between nature and man. The arrival of missionaries and how the locals treated them with a certain amount of skepticism and xenophobia. The portrayal of Vishakanyaka (poisonous virgin) as the spirit of the western ghat and Joseph as the innocent boy from the south who gets entrapped in the animalistic instincts of nature is portrayed in all its ferocity.
It was during my stay in Chennai that I was introduced to the African American writer named Alex Haley. He was a master of faction mixing fiction and facts. The seminal work of Alex Haley titled Roots traces his ancestry to a village in Kenya. Even though the novel was dubbed as a work of faction, i didn't see much of that genre. It was only when I read The City of Joy that I really felt the historic elements in the world of imagination.
Dominique Lapierre enthralled me again with his novel It was five past midnight in Bhopal. I was quite excited about these works because they genre of faction or historical fiction really appealed to my senses.
My reading pathway then took me to the novels of Elizabeth Kosotova. The novel The Historian narrated the story of Count Dracula. I purchased the second book titled 'The Swan Thieves' but could't read because of its sheer volume. I am searching for the ebook version of the same.
Dan Brown's The Da Vinci Code became the next book that took me to the world of historical fiction. It is a masterpiece and the book traversed through precarious literary, religious, and historical terrains. It was an instant hit and i remember travelling to Bangalore to watch the movie version since it was banned in Chennai.
It was Bobby uncle who mentioned about the novel by T.D Ramakrishnan tiled Francis Itty Cora. I was completely blown away by the sheer amount of information that the book carried. Seated in a rural town of Kerala, the author has managed to bring in the whole world in front of our eyes. The novel moves from Kunnamkulam to Florence in Italy and then to Lima in Peru. The story is narrated through letters and old manuscripts. There are several instances where the main characters are interacting with history and historical figures like Hypatia, Vasco De Gama, Roman generals and even artists of the Florentine school of painting.
The novel fascinated me because of the local flavour that it encapsulated. The Kunnamkulam lingo,cultural and religious ambiance is depicted in an authentic way. The story is centred in this town and its past. The titular hero used to live there and he was fondly known as Kora pappan. He was a patriarch and was also a business magnet. He had numerous ships and he used to conduct business with far off lands like Egypt, Abu Gharib Prsion, Iraq, and Italy. In one of his travels he never returned. He was enthralled by the spirit of Renaissance that he witnessed in Florence. In spite of his stay in Florence he was able to keep contacts with his hometown. It was in Florence that he heard about the Hypatian school of mathematics. He was deeply influenced by the concept of symmetry in nature. He found some co-relation between the Hypatian and the Kerala school of Mathematics. Two story threads which i found a bit unusual is the reference to cannibalism and the 'love school' that functioned in cochin. The author seems to have included them to garner more readership from the so called masses. The ritualistic act of offering grown up girl to Korapappan also takes the novel to the realms of black magic and occult.
The novel is interspersed with mathematical equations, sanskrit verses and quotes from ancient manuscripts and palmyra leaves. All these clearly shows the hardships that the author underwent to bring the story to its complete shape. Three words that guide this novel throughout are - Research, Research and Research.
I admire the craft of writing a novel and the pain behind the act of creation. It is a time consuming and time bound activity. Ihave been toying with an idea for the past one year and still is struggling to get that idea into a proper and decent shape
