Poonachi: Or the Story of a Black Goat Review “Poonachi is a classic Perumal Murugan novel, empathetically illuminating lives of quiet dignity overrun by subjugation and hardship... It’s a bleak coming-of-age tale that recalls classics like Black Beauty and Watership Down.  Like those novels, the social and political commentaries in Poonachi are veiled behind a tale that is ostensibly about goats… Murugan’s style, as always, is sparse. Born into a family of Gounder farmers in the Kongu region of Tamil Nadu, he effortlessly evokes the sights, sounds and smells of the place…” - Mint Lounge About the Author “After two years of being in exile, I feared to write about humans and it was far more difficult to write about Gods. When I started to write, I didn’t know I knew so much about a goat and it later on developed into a book.” … “I don’t know if I believe in god or not; but I question the need to worship or believe in god.” … "The goat is one animal that is close to my heart and one that I'm quite familiar with, so I thought writing about the animal will help me break out of the writer's block."… “A lot of foreign literature focuses on generic issues. However, in India, there is a different story everywhere.”- Perumal MuruganPerumal Murugan is the author of six novels, four collections of short stories and four anthologies of poetry in Tamil. Three of his novels have been translated into English: Seasons of the Palm, which was shortlisted for the Kiriyama Prize in 2005, Current Show and One Part Woman.  He was a professor of Tamil at the Government Arts College in Namakkal before taking to writing full-time. N. Kalyan Raman is a Chennai-based translator of contemporary Tamil fiction and poetry into English. He has published ten volumes of Tamil fiction in translation, working with a range of authorial voices and has also translated and published over 200 poems by leading contemporary Tamil poets in journals and anthologies from India and abroad. He also regularly contributes essays, reviews and articles on literature, culture and public policy. In February 2017, he received the prestigious Pudumaipithan award, given by Vilakku,  for his contribution to Tamil literature through his translations.