This is an excerpt from The Book of Exodus, the Malayalam novel by V.J. James, translated into English by Ministhy S. Its central character, Kunjootty, is trying to write a book about the people and stories of Potta Thuruthu, a backwater community near Kochi, Kerala. The passage moves between his childhood on the island and a later period in a shelter home.
What this passage is about
Kunjootty’s project is not simply to collect village anecdotes: the novel’s premise is that the residents’ intersecting lives, stories, myths and legends belong together. In the publisher’s description, Potta Thuruthu—“the Isle of Reeds”—is a rural community in Kochi’s backwaters, where past and present are not sharply separated.
The excerpt begins with Kunjootty in a shelter home, apparently distressed by nightmares, while his mother, Eli, keeps watch. It then returns to his childhood in Potta Thuruthu. The shift gives the passage two distinct settings and times; it should not be taken as evidence that the whole novel follows this exact structure.
The childhood memories at the heart of the excerpt
The gooseberry tree
Kunjootty and the other children cherish a gooseberry tree. It is one of the passage’s concrete points of connection to village childhood and shared memory.
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The chameleon
Kunjootty befriends a chameleon that he believes can communicate and knows the past, present and future. The belief brings the everyday natural world into contact with the story’s larger interest in memory, knowledge and the boundaries between what is real and what is imagined.
How to read the excerpt
Scroll.in published this passage on 22 August 2024 as an excerpt, not as a standalone short story. Its closing credit identifies the source as The Book of Exodus, written by V.J. James, translated from Malayalam by Ministhy S. and published by Penguin India. Read it as an introduction to the novel’s characters and atmosphere rather than as a complete account of Kunjootty’s attempt to write the villagers’ stories.
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About the English edition
Penguin Random House India lists the English translation under its Vintage Books imprint as a 408-page hardcover, ISBN 9780670096534, published in August 2024. The listed maximum retail price is ₹699; prices and availability may change. The publisher says the novel was originally published twenty-five years before the English edition, that the translation took more than twelve years, and that the Malayalam novel won the DC Books Silver Jubilee Award in 1999. These are publisher-provided historical and edition details.
For bibliographic information, see Penguin Random House India’s listing for The Book of Exodus. The excerpt is available at Scroll.in.
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