MUDRITHA: A NOVEL

Jayasree Kalathil is a bilingual writer and translator, and the author of The Sackclothman, a children's book that has been translated into Malayalam, Telugu, Hindi and Urdu. Her translations have won the Crossword Book Award (twice), the JCB Prize for Literature, the V. Abdulla Memorial Translation Award, the Mathrubhumi Book of the Year Award, and the Muse India–G.S.P. Rao Translation Prize Jury Commendation. Jayasree has also been shortlisted for the American Literary Translators Association's National Translation Award in Prose. She has received the 2026 New India Foundation Translation Fellowship and the 2025 Camargo Foundation Fellowship, Cassis, France, and was the translator-in-residence at the British Centre for Literary Translation, University of East Anglia, UK, in 2023. Currently, she is the managing editor of translated fiction at The Bombay Literary Magazine, and a mentor on the ALTA Emerging Translators Mentorship Programme. She lives in the UK.

Jissa Jose's debut novel, Mudritha (2021), was twice shortlisted for the Kerala Sahitya Akademi Award (in 2022 and 2024) and honoured with the Samadarshana Puraskaram in 2024. The book is in its sixth edition. She is the author of four other novels, Dark Fantasy (2021), Anandabharam (The Weight of Happiness, 2022), Mukthibahini (2023) and Blueberries (2024), and three short-story collections, Sarvamanushyarudeyum Rakshakku Vendiyulla Kripa (Grace for the Protection of All People, 2020), Irupathaam Nilayil Oru Puzha (On the Twentieth Floor, A River, 2020) and Pushpaka Vimanam (2022). Anandabharam was awarded the 2024 Ankanam Shamsuddin Smrithi Puraskaram. She has also authored Sthreevada Saundarya Shasthram (2020), a book on feminist aesthetics, its praxis and representation. Jissa is the principal of Government Arts and Science College, Kunnamangalam, Kozhikode. She has a PhD from the University of Calicut and received a post-doctoral award from the UGC. Originally from Kottayam, she currently lives in Kozhikode district, Kerala.