Tamil Short Stories

The short story format originated from Europe. The Tamil world believes that the short stories in Tamil can be traced back to the seventeenth century to 'Paramartha Kurunkathai' a transition from the classical Tamil poetry. V.V.S. Iyer started a new trend in the 1880s giving the short stories its profound form.

Pudumaipithan started the next stage of Tamil short storiesand many other writers came out with brilliant stories in Tamil. Pudumaipithan, Ku.Pa. Ra and P.S.Ramaiya and their contemporaries have written many stories that is today popular format with the Tamil literary circles and readers as the short story format.

Pudumaipithan

Pudumaipithan's stories carried messages for the society. His sincerely expressed his concern for the society and depicted the misery as well as drama in our lives. He wrote about the human relationships, their aspirations and life in general looked at closely. His 'Ponnagaram' was considered beyond the grasp of readers. He dealt with a wide array of subjects in his stories while also experimenting with the art of story telling. T.Janakiraman

T.Janakiraman's short stories brought the vagaries in the lives of people wonderfully and people could identify them with the characters.

Jayakanthan

Jayakanthan had written many outstanding stories some of which went on to be filmed later on. Most of his stories were published by Ananda Vikatan. While working in the office of 'Janasakthi' he developed a liking for Tamil literature and writing in Tamil. His stories were mostly about the people from the people living in the slums or extremely poor people.

N.Pichamoorthy

N.Pichamoorthy is a well known writer of Tamil short stories. 'Mannasai' is one of his popular short stories.

Sujatha

Sujatha is the pen name of S.Rangarajan who has written over 100 Tamil novels and 250 short stories in Tamil. His style of writing earned him a wide readership. His science fiction is said to be a pioneering work in Tamil. 'Aathma' is a short story which is a thrilling narration of a day in a computer engineer's life. Suri had made the computer the ability to predict the future giving it a set of rules that can observe the planetary positions. To test its efficacy he gives his birth details and the computer instantly gives the output on the screen. The story ends with the arrival of the inevitable moment. Sujatha's stories were published in popular Tamil magazines like Kumudam, Ananda Vikatan and Kalki.