Interview with D. Selvaraj, winner of the Sahitya Akademi award

•         Almost four decades have rolled by since the world-renowned Czech Tamil scholar Zvelebil made his assessment of writer Daniel Selvaraj’s contribution to modern Tamil literature in his famous work A History of Indian Literature published in 1973. Selvaraj’s novel, Thol (Hide), which speaks about the travails and struggles of the Dalit tannery workers of Dindigul in the composite Madurai district from 1930 to 1958, has been chosen for the Sahitya Akademi Award for 2011. The novel has already won the Tamil Nadu government’s award for 2010.