After writing an article on Top 10 Tamil Historical Novels, I thought of exploring the novels, stories and books on Tamil Fantasy genre. Fantasy falls under so many categories such as epic, heroic, fables, historical, magical, fairy tales, science fiction etc. The legendary mythical creatures in fantasy world include Elves, Dwarves, Dragons, Vampires, Werewolves, Angels, Unicorns, Centaurs , Mermaids, Ghosts, Demons, Devils, Goblins, Zombies, Witches, Trolls, Genies, Giants, Gnomes, Pixies, Immortals, Sorcerers, Nymphs and so on.
Though we have seen them in Hollywood fantasy movies or read them in English fantasy novels, we would be eager to know if they ever existed in fantasy books or movies in Indian languages. Though Indian authors have written fantasy novels in English, I thought of researching fantasy novels in the Indian native languages like Hindi, Tamil, Telugu, Kannada, Malayalam etc.
When it comes to epic fantasy, I can think of the best two as Mahabharata and Ramayana- the greatest epics of ancient India, written in Sanskrit. They are world popular and available in so many languages. I have read them in English, Hindi and Tamil and watched it as television series and movies from my childhood. They can give you thoughts for a lifetime.
When it comes to science fiction fantasy, I enjoyed reading novels - En Iniya Enthira and Meendum Jeano by writer Sujatha. These novels are based on robots and artificial intelligence. I would encourage young authors and story writers to write more novels and short stories on science fiction theme in Tamil. I heard about 6174 and 7.83 HZ novels written by Sudhakar Kasturi. Need to read them when I get those books.
For historical fantasy, we can get a huge reference from Indian mythology and Sangam Tamil literature. For example, a lot of fantasy themes we can imagine while reading Puranas. 18 of the major Purana and sub Purana written in Sanskrit verses are translated into Tamil, English, Hindi and other Indian languages.
Many Tamil movies, television series and short stories have been released based on Kanda Purana and Periya Purana. As I have to still read more on Sangam Tamil Literature and Puranas, I will write articles on those topics in my future blog posts.
Rest of the categories include fairy tales, folklore, and fables with full of magic and heroism. I love to read the fantasy novels on these areas, as it gives more thoughts to your brain while reading itself. The folklore stories have meaningful messages which brings out the common sense, bravery and thoughts to apply in real life. I have compiled a list of such novels which I enjoy reading any time. Though you can sneak a peek on those list of novels in google, wait for my next official blog post.
--Siva
