Ezhuthappuram (എഴുതാപ്പുറം) - Books and Banter

What's the story behind that book? Today we explore the strange coincidences and hard tragedies behind your favourite reads. Did Poe's only novel predict a gruesome tale of cannibalism on the seas? Extraordinary events and people that inspired hard-to-believe accounts are covered. Original air date: 4 July 2026 Featured Podcasters: Sandeep S, Krishnakumar Muraleedharan, Anup Asokan and Lek...

We move into international fiction, talking about topics ranging from Lolita to Satanic Verses, Fortune's Rocks to Ente Kadha, and the controversial pieces by otherwise mild-mannered writers.

We've had a fair share of these. The books, in our growing years, that someone told us not to read. The books that we had in our hand as teens/ adults that had people frowning upon us. The ones we are curious about, but never got to read, worrying about the scandal, if we were caught reading them. In this episode, we speak about Meesha, The Da Vinci Code, Perumal Murugan and others.

Without taking sides, we evaluate the various instances of plagiarism accusations in the literary society. It started as an opportunistic episode, but it slowly morphed into an in-depth conversation on tropes and plots.

We talk about Vaikkom Muhammad Basheer's most irreverent works centered around Anavari Raman Nair, Ponkurishu Thoma, Ettukaali Mammoonju, and others.

We talk about the works of Joseph Annamkutty Jose, Mose Varghese, Arun Arsha, and our very own Krishnakumar Muraleedharan, among other writers.

We speak about the wonderful works of Dr Rajad R, the crime fiction by Lajo Jose and the works of Vipin Das in this episode

We speak Kanthamalacharitham, Karuthachan, Kumaran, Dravidakkallu, Saira and Duswapnam pookkunna maram,

We talk primarily about the books from Anoop Sasikumar and Ram C/o Anandhi in this episode.

We talk about TDR, S Harish, Vinoy Thomas, Francis Noronha and others, in this episode.

Part one of our conversation about contemporary literary fiction works in Malayalam, focusing on Benyamin, G R Indugopan, and K R Meera.

We talk about books (and the movie adaptations) based out of spies, undercover operations - both fiction and nonfiction. Day of the Jackal Odessa files Hunt for Red October Jack Reacher War Machine Departed Infernal Affairs Man who came in from the cold Mission Impossible Three Days of the Condor Malabar House Quantum of Menace The Indian Spy

We speak of some important books that describe the human toll of war, starting with Kurt Vonnegut, Erich Maria Remarque, Joseph Conrad, and others.

We dive deeper into some of the memorable romantic relationshis in fiction, some obvoius and some subtle. There's also a conversation about the portrayal of physical intimacy in novels, and the fine line you tread while writing those.

Now we talk about notable romances in novels and fiction that are not predominantly about romance ! This episode covers Mahabharatha and Wuthering Heights...

On this Valentine's Day, we talk about romantic fiction, our favorite novels about romantic relationships, and some authors and their works that really tugged at our hearts- even though we may seem a little too old for that... We. talk about Gabrielle Zevin, MT, Sally Rooney, Carlos Luis Zafon, Delia Owens, Padmarajan, and other writers who tugged at the strings of our hearts...

We look at some of the stalwarts in the fantasy space- Tolkien, George RR Martin and some lesser names that have entertained us.

We continue with some standalone fantasy works, starting from Life of Pi, Piranesi, Alice, Ring shout etc...

We wet our feet in the wide realm of fantasy novels, starting with the first one that comes to the mind- Harry Potter series, followed by The Bartimaeus Trilogy, The Deep and Vita Nostra.

The gang discusses their favorite English reads of 2025, highlighting the noteworthy ones and those that didn't quite work for them.

We talk about the Malayalam books we read in 2025. English books to follow in the next episode.

We talk about books that created reader's blocks as well as books that got us out of blocks. Another unstructured, casual banter with lots of digression, especially around piracy of books.

We had uploaded this a few months ago, but it ended up disappearing by magic. Re-uploading part 1 of the short stories episode

One of the much-loved actors and screenwriters in the Malayalam film industry, the OG screenwriter who redefined clean, intelligent comedy- Srinivasan passed away yesterday. We reminisce on the impact his writing had on our formative years, and pay our tribute to the legend ...

We do not claim to be poets nor poetry appreciators. But we took the bold leap of jumping into a conversation about poetry, both Malayalam and English. It was fun, went wa...ay longer than we anticipated, and showed that we should pay more attention to poetry.