M.T Vasudevan Nair

Madathil Thekkepaattu Vasudevan Nair (born 15 July 1933), popularly known as MT, is an Indian author, screenplay writer and film director.^[1] A prolific and versatile writer in modern Malayalam literature, he is considered one of the masters of post-Independence Indian literature.^[2] He was born in Kudallur, a small village in the present day Palakkad district (Palghat), which was under the Malabar District in the Madras Presidency of the British Raj. He shot into fame at the age of 20 when, as a chemistry undergraduate, he won the prize for the best short story in Malayalam at World Short Story Competition conducted by The New York Herald Tribune. His debut novel Naalukettu (The Legacy), wrote at the age of 23, won the Kerala Sahitya Akademi Award in 1958. His other famous novels include Manju (Mist), Kaalam (Time), Asuravithu (The Demon Seed) and Randamoozham (The Second Turn). The deep emotional experiences of his early days have gone into the making of MT’s novels. Most of his works are oriented towards the basic Malayalam family structure and culture and many of them were path-breaking in the history of Malayalam literature. His three seminal novels on life in the matriarchal family in Kerala are Naalukettu, Asuravithu, and Kaalam. Randamoozham, which retells the story of the Mahabharatha from the point of view of Bhimasena, is widely credited as his masterpiece.