The Story of a Goat

A funny, poignant, and surprising novel about a goat's life in rural India by the greatest living Tamil author

A farmer in India is watching the sun set over his village one quiet evening when a mysterious stranger, a giant man who seems more than human, appears on the horizon. He offers the farmer a black goat kid who is the runt of the litter, surely too frail to survive. The farmer and his wife take care of the young she-goat, whom they name Poonachi, and soon the little goat is bounding with joy and growing at a rate they think miraculous.

But Poonachi's life is not destined to be a rural idyll: dangers lurk around every corner, and may sometimes come from surprising places, including a government that is supposed to protect the weak and needy. Is this little goat too humble a creature to survive such a hostile world?

With allegorical resonance for contemporary society and examining hierarchies of caste and colour, The Story of the Goat is a provocative but heartwarming fable from a world-class storyteller who is finally achieving recognition outside his home country.

Perumal Murugan is an Indian author and professor of Tamil literature. He has written six novels and four collections each of short stories and poetry. His best-known novel One Part Woman, highly controversial in India, won the ILF Samanvay Basha Samman, and Aniruddhan Vasudevan's English rendering won the Translation Prize from India's National Academy of Letters.