Published by the Penguin Group
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First published in Malayalam by Current Books 1969
First published in English by Penguin Books India 1994
Copyright © O.V. Vijayan 1991, 1994
Translated from the Malyalam by THE AUTHOR
Cover painting Risky Lives by K. Rajaiah
All rights reserved
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents are either the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously and any resemblance to any actual person, living or dead, events or locales is entirely coincidental.
ISBN: 978-01-4306-367-4
This digital edition published in 2013.
e-ISBN: 978-93-5118-009-8
For my father
This book is sold subject to the condition that it shall not, by way of trade or otherwise, be lent, resold, hired out, or otherwise circulated without the publisher’s prior written consent in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published and without a similar condition including this condition being imposed on the subsequent purchaser and without limiting the rights under copyright reserved above, no part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in or introduced into a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means (electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise), without the prior written permission of both the copyright owner and the above-mentioned publisher of this book.