Description

The Kural by Tiruvalluvar is an ancient work of the Sangam Age. The author of this book raises the query: 'What is it that makes the Kural immortal?' and tries to seek an answer.

Being a treatise on such a mundane theme as 'the art of living', and written under a political, social and economic milieu of such vast difference as may hardly be comparable with the modern age, one would expect it to face the inevitable fate of obsolescence. On the contrary, scholars and thinkers, increasingly admire and advocate the Kural as relevant even today and claim for it the virtue of universal and timeless appeal.

The author highlights Valluvar's penetrating insights into the unshifting foundations of life and his extraordinary genius for abstraction and generalizations. It is strikingly different from any book or commentary so far written on the Kural.

Presenting the Award, the Sahitya Akademi in its citation states that for the perceptiveness, analytical approach and scholarly treatment, the book has been hailed as a contribution to contemporary Tamil literature.