Seafarers in Tamil: 'Kaṭalōṭikaḷ' launched at the Toronto Tamil Book Fair

Jaffna Monitor

Jaffna Monitor · Image source

Source published Nov 4, 2026 · Scarborough

What To Know

'Kaṭalōṭikaḷ' (கடலோடிகள், 'Seafarers') gathers ten stories by Alagu Subramaniam, Thurairajah Tambimuttu, V. V. Ganeshananthan and Vajra Chandrasekera, translated into Tamil by Anuja Prakash and N. Asokan, who writes under the pen name eḻuttukkiṉiyavaṉ. The book was published by the Chennai-based house Karuppu Pirathigal and launched in a one-hour session at the Malvern Family Resource Centre in Scarborough during the Toronto Tamil Book Fair on October 24, according to Jaffna Monitor.

The four writers span three generations and roughly a century. Subramaniam was a Jaffna barrister who moved in London's Bloomsbury circle and helped found the magazine Indian Writing, while Tambimuttu founded Poetry London and published a story in The New Yorker in 1954. Ganeshananthan's novel 'Brotherless Night' won the Women's Prize for Fiction in 2024, and Chandrasekera's 'The Saint of Bright Doors' won the Nebula Award for Best Novel. The launch session featured Kaalam Selvam, long-time editor of the Toronto literary magazine Kaalam, Sumangala Kailasapathy and Arunmozhivarman, along with a recorded conversation with Ganeshananthan, who teaches in the University of Minnesota's M.F.A. program.

Co-translator Asokan, a computer scientist at the University of Waterloo, told the audience he had first worked in the opposite direction, translating stories by A. Muttulingam and Shobasakthi into English for second-generation Tamil children in Canada who know the culture but cannot read the language. He said he sought permission before translating Tambimuttu, tracing the writer's daughter Shakuntala, who told him she held more of her father's stories, some unavailable anywhere else. The project then grew into a single volume of writers celebrated in English and largely unread in Tamil.

Background: the Toronto Tamil Book Fair 2026 ran October 24–25, 2026, as a joint initiative of the Canadian Tamil Congress and the United Sri Lankan Muslim Council of Canada, following the first fair last year. In Canada, 'Kaṭalōṭikaḷ' is available from Kaalam Selvam, and Jaffna Monitor notes a book introduction and discussion is planned in Batticaloa on Sunday, December 13.