Out in the Moonlight

A little boy runs excitedly in the darkness, lit only by the light of a bright, bright moon. He is going with his mother and baby brother to the millet fields. As his mother works, he tries to make the most of the moonlit night with his newfound friend, a stray dog, while his brother sleeps...

It takes an exceptional writer like Perumal Murugan to narrate this vignette from his own life, evocatively and unsentimentally. Mood-filled illustrations bring the unfamiliar close in a nights-cape redolent with anticipation and danger.