MAN WHO LEARNT TO FLY BUT COULD NOT LAND THE

K.T.N. Kottoor was activist lover communist friend saint sinner - but above all he was a writer...Born into a family of rural wealth and near-feudal influence in a village nestled in British Malabar Koyiloth Thazhe Narayanan Kottoor knows little of want. But as a patriotic fervour grips the country in the last decades of the Raj a veritable avalanche of new ideas and ideals shapes the young KTN. As he grows from a boy who takes to writing not only as art but also as a tool of social change to an activist enamoured of varying philosophies and enmeshed in India's freedom struggle he grapples with hardship love lust and a search for meaning in a reality that forever disappoints. His is a tale both deeply personal and political - tracing a web of caste sexuality and ideology while also navigating the struggles of a man coming to terms with himself as a writer and as an individual. Award-winning author Thachom Poyil Rajeevan weaves a magical almost-biography of a fictional writer one inhabited by goddesses and ghosts a fortune-telling parrot dead humans in the avatar of crows and a blind woman who hears - and sees - better than anyone else. Masterfully translated from the original Malayalam The Man Who Learnt to Fly but Could Not Land is a poignant exploration of the power of writing the chaos of a country's rebirth and the life of an idealist caught up in the maelstrom.