Jeyamohan The Abyss reviews and information of the content of the novel by the Tamil author form India. Transit Books will publish the English translation of the novel by Jeyamohan the Indian Tamil writer, on April 28, 2026. Here you can read information about the content of the book, the author and the publication.
Jeyamohan The Abyss reviews and information reviews and information
Whenever a review of The Abys, the novel written by Jeyamohan, appears in the media, we’ll highlight it on this page.
- “An astonishing work… I have read nothing like it in years.” (Sam Sacks, The Wall Street Journal)
- “A uniquely harrowing read… The author has skillfully disappeared inside this extraordinary and important story. Illuminating.” (Sara Baume, The Irish Times)
The Abyss
- Author: Jeyamohan (India)
- Book type: Tamil novel from India
- Original titel: Ezhaam Ulagam (2003)
- English translation: Suchitra Ramachandran
- Publisher: Transit Books
- To be released: April 28, 2026
- Length: 352 pages
- Format: hardcover / ebook
- Prize: $ 26.95
- Buying options >
Blurb of the novel by the Tamil writer Jeyamohan
Raw, tender, and darkly comic, The Abyss is widely considered a masterpiece from Jeyamohan, a writer whose body of work has shaped modern Tamil literature.
Pothivelu Pandaram is known as a successful, God-fearing man about town: he has a loyal wife, three daughters, and money to pay for their dowries. However, it’s an open secret that his success is fueled by a trade that is as profitable as it is cruel: he owns—and breeds—a group of physically deformed beggars and places them outside temples to collect money.
There is Mangandi Samy, with just one arm, no legs, and “a little head on top,” who only speaks in divine songs he himself invents; Ahmedkutty, an intellectual whose testicles hang to the floor “like two great pumpkins”; Muthammai, mother to eighteen children. To Pandaram, they are only “items,” to be bought and sold like cattle. But when he makes an impulsive trade, his luck turns.
Written with an unflinching eye and suffused with a deep existential longing, The Abyss is an extraordinary novel—for its terrain, its fundamental questions about humanity, and its depiction of human suffering and liberation.
Bahuleyan Jeyamohan was born April 22, 1962 in Thiruvarambu, Kanyakumari district, Tamil Nadu, He is a preeminent writer in modern Tamil literature. His works of fiction examine fundamental human questions while being rooted in the spiritual, cultural and literary traditions of India. Venmurasu, his reimagination of the epic Mahabharata over a novel-series of twenty-six parts, is considered one of the longest literary works in the world. His other major works include the novels Vishnupuram, Kottravai, Pin Thodarum Nizhalin Kural, Kaadu, and Ezhaam Ulagam (The Abyss). He is the founder of several important cultural initiatives in Tamil, including a literary organization called the Vishnupuram Literary Circle, an encyclopedia of Tamil culture called Tamil Wiki, and an institute that offers courses in philosophy, cultural and religious studies called Nityavanam. The Abyss is his second work to be available in English, following his short story collection Stories of the True, which was a finalist for the National Translation Award in 2023. Jeyamohan lives in Nagercoil, India.