Things We Found During the Autopsy

Author: Kuzhali Manickavel

Publisher: Blaft Publications (2014)

Things We Found During the Autopsy is South Indian writer Kuzhali Manickavel's second collection of short fiction, in which she presents a dizzying array of apocalyptic visions and fractured childhood memories.

These stories contain the following: a dragon; angels; Indian culture; one Christmas story for children; no Indian culture whatsoever; men; poor people; voluntarily homeless youths; women; drugs; sex; Indian dads in cold foreign countries; vomit; boys; girl's hostels; girls; future tense; the Tropicool Icy-Land Urban Indian Slum; ash, and the people who eat ash; authentic village life written from a privileged English-speaking perspective; homosexuals; white people; references to Rajinikanth; non-italicized Tamil words; whores; brain aneurysms; Western dance in South Indian women's colleges; Pazhani; floods; shapeshifters; men named Kathir; minty-fresh non-cola cola; and wannabe Naxalites.

"A small book from a small publisher by a quiet writer with a fanatical following... Kuzhali Manickavel writes dense, dazzling prose that is thick with local grit and soars in a cosmopolitan wonderland. It’s heartbreaking and beautiful and also completely bonkers. You will find yourself flailing, whether reading her intermittent blog, her first book, or this one, her second, but rest assured that this is the best kind of bonkers; she is incapable of making anything less than perfect nonsense."

–Achal Prabhala