Erendira, the protagonist of this heart-rending tale of exploitation and the imagination of freedom is symbolic of the under-aged trafficking networks and its resilient survivors across India. In Taboo, metred into rhythm in her inimitable style, Nirmala plunges into the context of disturbing crime, trafficking and unfreedom. Flying high in the Himalayan ranges, weaving a trail through  Coimbatore, Ooty, Chandigarh, Khandala and the shipping town of Alang, diving down to the southern-most tip of India and onwards to Sri Lanka,  Erendira, through many languages and cultures unearths the forbidden identity of a sex worker on a footpath.  Finally you emerge questioning the intent of our society and political organizations to stop this and the utter disregard for such questions in our democracy.

RECOGNITION

Shortlisted for Rabindranath Tagore Literary Prize

Longlisted for Atta Galatta Bangalore Literature Festival Book Prize 2020

Longlisted for JK Paper Women Author Awards

SHORTLISTED ‘TAGORE AWARD’ ANNOUNCEMENTS IN MEDIA
The Indian Express
The Times of India
Transcontinental Times
Outlook India
Tribune India
The Week
Deccan Herald

VIDEOS

Theatreperson Ashish Sen chats with Nirmala Govindarajan about Taboo

‘Taboo’ Book Launch at Goa Arts & Literature Festival

‘This is a book that blends genres and defies description. Its style is deceptively playful but it conceals as much as it reveals the horrors beneath the surface’ — JERRY PINTO

‘There’s music, sex, the scent of forgotten flowers and the search for lost mothers. Taboo is a stylised, lyrical, often macabre urban adventure about love, abandonment, power and the persistence of memory. Audaciously defying boundaries to weave in and out of genres, languages, cultures, myths and realities, it tells a remarkable story of today’s India and its people’ — ANTARA DEV SEN

‘Taboo travels between places, languages, and characters to map a searing and humane story’ — HANSDA SOWVENDRA SHEKHAR

THE SUNDAY GUARDIAN
Love in the time of identity politics

SILVERSCREEN INDIA
Rabindranath Tagore Literary Prize Shortlist For 2020 Out Now

FRANKFURTER ALLGEMEINE ZEITUNG
Taboo finds a long mention in Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung (Germany’s leading newspaper), in Philipp Theisohn’s article on India

(The translated paragraph on Taboo): “Of course, this literature not only has topics such as the caste problem, but also visionaries and stylists. Nirmala Govindarajan, for example, whose second-generation “Taboo” owes a documentary interest in the subject of human trafficking and child prostitution, but at the same time develops highly literary qualities. If Govindarajan gives the kidnapped Erendira the ability to wrestle her own mythology from the ordeal of her trip, then it is also about empowerment. “Literary language pushes boundaries. If the world of these girls is penetrated by magical realism, by poetry, then they have access to their own narrative, ”says Govindarajan. As a result, social drama is replaced by emphatic literacy. With this author you get to know a literary engagement that you will hardly find anywhere else in the western world: Govindarajan always keeps the eye of the poet in the concretion of misery. This is perhaps best described as “embedded poetry”. And worth reading.”

(The translated paragraph on Taboo): Literary scholar Philipp Theisoh recommends Nirmala Govindarajan’s “Taboo” – a book with “documentary interest in the subject of human trafficking and child prostitution”: “Instead of social drama there is an emphatic literacy . With this author you get to know a literary engagement as you can in it in the western world: ” Govindarajan always keeps the eye of the poet in the concretion of misery .”

THE DECCAN HERALD
Nirmala Govindarajan’s ‘Taboo’ documents stories of girls pushed into sex trade

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This Novel is a Breathless Ride Through Love and Sex, Power and Slavery, Crime and Trafficking