If you’ve never heard of Jeyamohan, I wouldn’t be surprised. Until recently, his work wasn’t widely available in English outside India. That is starting to change: next month Hachette in the UK (and FSG Originals in the US) is bringing out his novel White Elephant, translated from the Tamil by Priyamvada Ramkumar. This was the first I read of his works and I was blown away by it – a harrowing indictment of empire told through the eyes of an Irish farmer’s son, who goes to work for the British military police during the nineteenth century and finds himself caught up in India’s first labour uprising. I am sure it will be a big hit.

After reading that, I was eager for more. Luckily for me, there was another Jeyamohan novel that had been published in English in India by Juggernaut and brought out by Transit Books elsewhere earlier this year. It is this novel that forms the subject of this post.

The Abyss, translated by Suchitra Ramachandran, centres on Pothivelu Pandaram, a successful citizen with an unsavoury secret: most of his money comes from trading and breeding physically deformed beggars, who he places outside temples in order to profit from the donations they receive. These ‘items’, as he calls them, aren’t in the same category of being as his family and business associates – to him, they are commodities that cannot think and feel, and do not deserve the same dignity and agency as other human beings. But when he makes an unlucky deal and his luck begins to turn, Pandaram is forced to confront the possibility that the line between him and his ‘items’ may be thinner and more porous than he’d like to believe.

This is not a novel for the faint of heart. Depictions of extreme cruelty and dehumanisation run through it. From the relentless abuse of Muthammai who has been raped, impregnated and then separated from her offspring 18 times to the glimpses of the horrific practice of kidnapping and then disfiguring children to put them out to beg, incidents of the worst things human beings can do to one another abound in its pages. The title is fitting: the story truly takes us into the abyss.

Yet this is also one of the most humane books I’ve read. Some of this is to do with the quality of the writing. Jeyamohan has a fantastic eye, capturing the myriad quirks and blind spots that make up the human experience. He also has a wonderful ear for dialogue, and many of the exchanges are very funny and surprising, as well as tender and warm. The beggars, far from being passive victims, are lively, irreverent and sometimes inspiring individuals, often capable of much greater insight and generosity than those with power over them.

It is also important to acknowledge the achievement of Suchitra. The original featured many forms of dialect and different registers, such that, she writes in her commentary, translating the novel seemed to her ‘the equivalent of rendering James Joyce into Tamil’. That she has achieved such an engrossing and distinctive version, while retaining much of the linguistic variety and many of the references of the original, is quite a feat, particularly given that this is her first full-length translation.

But there’s something deeper at work too. Despite the extreme nature of much of the content, there is no salaciousness, voyeurism or moralising here. Instead, the narrative offers us a steady presence in this hidden world, presenting details plainly and honestly, without the gloss of judgement. We live among the characters and see why they do what they do.

In a conversation with Suchitra featured at the back of the version I read, Jeyamohan talks about the distinction between sympathy and empathy. To empathise, he says, is to be someone ‘who is there as one among’ those we read about. Only then can we understand why they make the choices that they do. This is what he aims for in his novel, rather than the lofty sympathising that so often informs the attitudes of the fortunate to suffering (and which, according to Jeyamohan, often underpins oppression – ‘All the dictators and commissars of the world started out as great humanists.’)

Biographical reasons may mean that it is easier for Jeyamohan to get among his characters than it would be for many other writers: in 1981, at the age of nineteen, Jeyamohan ran away from home and lived as a beggar for some time. He makes no secret of the fact that this experience informed this novel, and that finally tapping into those memories unleashed a rich flow of narrative that saw him finishing the book in just five days when he sat down to write it in 2003.

Yet other aspects of his biography may present obstacles for some readers. Shortly after reading this novel, still giddy with its brilliance, I encountered some online reports of misogynistic statements Jeyamohan had made on his blog in 2014.

In her excellent book Monsters: What Do We Do With Great Art By Bad People? critic and writer Claire Dederer works through her quandary about her love for the films of Roman Polanski, even in spite of his terrible abuse of an underage girl. We live in the age of biography, she says. These days it is impossible for us to encounter an artwork without also encountering its creator’s biography. As a result, the question of whether we can or should separate the art from the artist is particularly pressing these days.

Perhaps that’s true in the English-speaking world. But when it comes to stories from elsewhere, the matter is not always so simple. Most of the discussions of the controversy around Jeyamohan’s comments (which, as far as I can tell, drew strong criticism from a number of writers and critics) took place in a language I can’t read. Even if I could read them, my cultural compass may not be sufficiently attuned to navigate the statements accurately and understand the lie of the land now. Would it be better to amplify the work of a different writer who has not used their voice to diminish others? Should I allow reports I have limited means of evaluating to stop me championing work in which I believe? Who am I to judge this?

In the absence of certainty, it seems that all I can do is be honest about the limits of what I can say. White Elephant and The Abyss are two of the best books I have read in a long time – exceptional studies in empathy that will speak to readers everywhere. And their author is on record making dismissive and derogatory statements about women writers. Jeyamohan is a master of depicting human failings. And, like many artists and writers, he may be an exemplar of some of those failings too.

The Abyss by Jeyamohan, translated from the Tamil by Suchitra Ramachandran (Transit Books, 2026)

Photo: ‘Meenakshi Temple, madurai, eastern gopuram (1)’ by Richard Mortel on flickr.com