In my immediate family, my dad is the only one with the reading proficiency to read Tamil literature, with multiple shelves devoted to his novel collection and active subscription to the websites of Tamil lit magazines like Ananda Vikatan and Thuglaq. I'm at the reading level where I can only attempt reading the titles on the covers so it's not really a hobby/interest that we've been able to discuss and share as a family. But I just really personally liked that this book helped us bridge that language divide. I was able to talk to my father about Tamil lit for the first time ever and, although it's been a while since he's read some of these authors, it was just really nice to be able to share this moment with him!

So, yes, a lot of these plots were wild, reminiscent of like B-movie Tamil movie plots, but this was the first time I actually even read anything translated to English from Tamil and I had this warm feeling of familiarity while reading.

Many of the stories were crime stories full of hard-boiled detectives and those are not super interesting to me but I hope the other volumes in this collection have other genre fiction as I'd love to read more of the romance and science fiction/fantasy stories. The one story I really really enjoyed was "Dim Lights, Blazing Hearts" by Ramanichandran, which was a contemporary-ish (dated 1997) romance that felt very Austenian, with misunderstandings, class differences, and a delicate yet lovely development of Feelings after the female protag rejects her love interest.