‘True Story of a Writer, A Philosopher and a Shape-shifter’: Truth is contentious in a ‘true story’

A writer of novels, essays, children’s fiction, and travelogues, Paul Zacharia is known for his surrealistic and chimeric narratives that teleport readers to a world with its own unique laws. Zacharia has written over 50 works in Malayalam, known for blending mystery and ambiguity. He is a Distinguished Fellow of the Kerala Sahitya Akademi and has also received the Kendra Sahitya Akademi and Kerala Sahitya Akademi awards.

True Story of a Writer, A Philosopher And a Shape-shifter, is a revised edition of Zacharia’s debut novel in English, The Secret History of Compassion, published in 2019, in which he portrays reality as contentious by inverting and skewing traditional structures such as husband/wife, truth/lie, and life/death.

In True Story of a Writer, A Philosopher And a Shape-shifter, Paul Zacharia weaves humour, magic, and ambiguity to create a world where hunger is old-fashioned, air is copyrighted, and the moral market is saturated. The logical fallacies that govern the Writer, Philosopher, and Shape-Shifter make their story a “true story”.

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