A review by ajuanijustus
ഖസാക്കിന്റെ ഇതിഹാസം | Khasakkinte Ithihasam by O.V. Vijayan

4.0

It's a pity that Khasakkinte Ithihasam was introduced to me as "what One Hundred Years of Solitude's Macondo was to Aracataca is what Khasakkinte Ithihasam's Khasak was to Thasarak." I mean, I get it. My head hurt just as much reading this as it did when I was reading One Hundred Years of Solitude, and I by no means understood nearly enough of book, but I still think I got a lot more of the implied subtext because, unlike Macondo, Khasak is nammude swantham (well, kinda).

Throughout the time I was reading (or after the prose got too hard and I switched to the audiobook), I was going around randomly saying Allappicha Mollakka, much like I would randomly sprout out José Arcadio Buendía. And I get it, okay—I know I am referencing One Hundred Years of Solitude a lot for someone who opened this review the way I did.

I don't think I've ever read anything else that portrayed guilt better. Though not my favorite, I liked the portrayal of betrayal (I think? Because it do be abstract, nah mean).

And hi, I know you're reading this and you don't read malayalam—the english translation (though there are some differences) was written by the original author O. V. Vijayan, and if you want a peek into a magical-realism-esque take on Kerala, add it to your to-read list. (And if you think you do read malayalam and are stubborn like I was, when the palakkadan-tamil-malayalam prose inevitably gets impossible, the free audiobooks on youtube are awesome—the book is head-hurting enough without having to decode the words) thank you alisha

...is this...the longest review I've written? allappicha mollakka byeeee