Lanthanbatheriyile Luthiniyakal

LL is an awe inspiring tale by the uber talented novelist N S Madhavan. It's the story of a small island near cochin, which was once a Dutch battery - 'Lanthakkar' as the Dutch were called in Kerala and 'batheri' the colloquial term of Battery. In the novel, Madhavan strings in the illustrious history of the island, the colorful life of it's inhabitants with the story of the protagonist - a little girl named Iris Edwina Maria Gorethy Anna Jessica. What did I like the most about this novel?It's so hard to choose - may be the glimpses into the colonial past of Kerala or its rich religious history or the picturesque depiction of chavittunatakam, including it's origins from the Italian poet Ludwico Ariosta and his Orlando Furioso and the amusing but absurd Godse Gandhi story in the chavittunatakam format or the brilliant portrayal of its characters like Peelathosachan (Malayalam for Father Pontius Pilate) the priest obsessed with hand washing and Pusphangadan, the school teacher hell bent on disproving Fermat's theorem. LL is for sure one of the finests Malyalam novels I've read in recent times.