Considered one of Ashokamitran's finest works of fiction, won the Hakkia Chintanai Book-of-the-Year Award and appears in English for the first time in a unique sensitive translation.
Chandrasekhar, adolescent, vulnerable, confused, is growing up in the momentous period before and after 1947 when Hyderabad is the State of the Nizam. This political setting drumbeats through the novel, closely and ironically interwoven with Chandru's life at home, in the city and at college. In a brilliant narrative which shifts between first person and third, The Eighteenth Parallel presents the social, political and human events through Chandru's eyes with the double-stranding of humor and anguish characteristic of Ashokamitran's writing.