Tamil Author Perumal Murugan launches new book - a collection of 200 poems "A Coward's Song" Monday Aug 22,2016

Contemporary Tamil author Perumal Murugan on Monday Aug 22,2016 ended a self-imposed literary exile of 19 months with a new book - a collection of 200 poems "A Coward's Song".

Threatened by protests from Hindutva activists against his Tamil novel "Madhorubagan" (One Part Woman), which they deemed offensive, a dismayed Murugan had announced in a Facebook post in December 2014 that the writer in him was dead. "Author Perumal Murugan is dead," he had written.

In July, the Madras High Court had dismissed a plea seeking prosecution of the author and ban of his "offensive" book in Tamil, besides forfeiting all the copies of its English translation "One Part Woman" saying there was nothing obscene in the book

Perumal Murugan,the 50-year-old author also recited two poems "Hometown" and "A Coward's Song" before that. Describing the first three months after he had declared his "death", Murugan said he did not want to "even write one word". He said during that time he felt like a like "a walking corpse", and "like a rat in a burrow".

"It was poetry that saved me. My mind has now attained a state of being able to write poetry," he said, adding now when he writes he feels a censor seated within him and "unable to shake him off".

"My writing will do little to change the world so let me be quiet and speak through my writings," said the author, who began writing poetry when he was a child.

Perumal Murugan, who has previously written six novels, four collections of short stories and four anthologies of poetry, said he doubts whether he can continue to write in his usual realist mode.

"I doubt whether I can continue to write in future in the realist mode. I might have to resort to other techniques. Only time will tell on that," he said.