Lalithambika Antharjanam, J. Devika, Associate Professor, Centre for Development Studies Lalithambika Antharjanam (1909-1989) is widely recognized as one of the first women to win acclaim in the early twentieth century as a writer in modern Malayalam literature. Born in a progressive Brahmin family in south Kerala, she was one of the few Brahmin women who were exposed to modern learning and ways of life, at a time when traditional seclusion of women was the rule in her community. She was initially renowned as a powerful voice which questioned the place of women in the traditional Malayali Brahmin way of life in Kerala, but her critique of modern gender as it was advanced by modernizing social reformism is also a significant part of her work. She published nine volumes of short stories, the short story being the genre which brought her most fame. She won several prestigious awards, and her only novel, Agnisakshi (1976) won the Kendra Sahitya Akademi Award and the Kerala Sahitya Akademi Award. J. Devika is associate professor at the Centre for Development Studies, Trivandrum, Kerala, and has a doctoral degree in history. She has published several translations---a volume of short stories by Sarah Joseph, The Masculine of Virgin (2012), a novel and a novella by K.R. Meera, Hangwoman (2014) and And Slowly Forgetting that Tree... (2015). She has also written introductions for many translations, including the memoirs of Devaki Nilayangode, Antharjanam: Memoirs of a Namboodiri Woman (2011), Lalithambika Antharjanam's novel Agnisakhi (2015), and Johny Miranda's novella, Requiem for the Living (2013).
