About the Authors
Set in the stately, forest-clad hills of the Malnad region in the Western Ghats during the late nineteenth century, Bride in the Hills articulates the aspiration of young men and women for dignity and emancipation in their lives, within a caste-ridden social order. Kuvempu's multi-centric Kannada novel (1967), with its organic weave of narrative strands, much like the Mahabharata, chronicles the emergence of a vibrant and complex rural society under the aegis of modernity. One of the early texts to portray the distinctive experience of the Shudra life-world, the novel inaugurates a new dimension in modern Indian literature. This epic novel with the sweep of a Tolstoy classic enacts its mission statement-'Here, no one is important; no one is unimportant; nothing is insignificant!'-with brilliance, energy and imaginative power.
About the Author
Kuvempu (1904-94), a household name in Karnataka, led Kannada literature to great heights with his prolific, profound and poetic works. Interrogating Western rationality as well as Indian traditional mores, he was a 'poet of the forest' hailing from Malnad, a region rich in its biodiversity, who imbued his works with a unique ecological consciousness in ways that only a writer can-through the magic of his art.
About the Translated
Vanamala Viswanatha is a scholar-translator who has translated renowned texts from pre-modern and modern Kannada literature into English.
Introduction
Kuvempu (1904-94), the acronym derived from Kuppali Venkatappa Puttappa, hailed from a remote hamlet in the Malnad region of Karnataka. Puttappa, the little boy, was initially schooled at home in the traditional way in Kuppali. But later he was admitted to the Anglo-Vernacular School, set up by Christian missionaries in Thirthahalli, in which the advantage of English education was open to all castes and communities. He later moved to Mysore, where the sojourn in the calm ambience of the Ramakrishna Mission nourished the young Kuvempu. Thus, Mysore became his second home, where he pursued higher studies, worked as a teacher, led his life as a householder and retired as vice chancellor of the University of Mysore. He was determined to fight the hegemonic power of religious orthodoxy in all its forms.
Questioning the inhuman varna system, he offered a road map for the development of modern Kannada culture and society. With his formidable body of writing across all genres that reflects his progressive politics, Kuvempu has come to be a phenomenon inalienably identified with the Kannada language and statehood. In fact, a poem he penned in 1928 was chosen to be the state anthem of Karnataka in 2004. Inspired by Sri Ramakrishna, Vivekananda, Aurobindo, Gandhi and Tagore, he sculpted a humanism rooted in spirituality.
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