Black Soil

Kannappan arrives in Perumalpuram as the village's new schoolteacher. The village sits in the black soil country of Tamil Nadu, where the Tamirabarani river flows. He is an outsider there, and his only guide and friend is Veerayyan, a local farmer.

As he settles in, Kannappan sees the daily cruelty the farmers suffer under the Master, a sadistic and all-powerful landlord. Child marriage is common, and so is the shocking custom of marrying young boys to older women who then become their father-in-law's consort. Through patient, probing conversations, Kannappan tries to show the villagers another way to live.

The farmers have begun to protest the abuses of their upper-caste landlord, and they find an ally in the teacher. His sympathy lifts their flagging spirits and strengthens their will to resist.

This was Ponneelan's first novel, and it is now available in translation for the first time. It exposes the atrocities the farmers endured and the human price of working toward a better future.