Amazon Stateless Category:  Literary Fiction Publisher: Cyberwit.net ISBN-10:  8182531241 Type: Fiction Pages: 193 Copyright: 2008 ISBN-13: 9788182531246 Price: $20.00 (eBook) In “The Night Soil Man” T. Wignesan weaves yet another tale using social commentary and sarcasm – and inciting more than a few snickers from this reviewer. Mr. Wignesan is no stand-up comic, but rather an intellectual who uses his insight and command of language to question the status quo. His wit is – surely – a formidable weapon; and his ability to wield that sword so adeptly makes him a dangerous man (un homme dangereux). Reviewed by Adam Donaldson Powell "The Night Soil Man", a novel by T. Wignesan Dedicated to my father: Thuraiappah s/o Arumugam who emigrated to the old Federation of Malaya, as the only child upon his father's death, when he was 16 in 1917 and worked in the Malayan Railways under the British Colonial Administration. The invading Japanese imprisoned him in March 1942; he died on June 7, 1942, leaving behind my mother, aged 26 and five of my siblings et moi y compris. Book blurb by the author: Unlike Mulk Raj Anand's "Untouchable", this satirical novel serves as a scathing comment on the mindset of so-called middle-caste Hindus, on the one hand, and the colonial settler mentality, on the other, by looking at the issue from across or from the other side of the social divide. The plot unfolds like cinéma-vérité! The action takes place during a few days at a Hindu temple and its environs in the Malay(si)an capital where a national Hindu conference brings together the leaders and representatives of a cross-section of the local immigrant Indo-Sri-Lankan communities, ostensibly to discuss and forge unity among themselves in the face of imminent Independence from the colonial British administration. The introduction of an "Untouchable" or "Night Soil Man" in the midst of so-called higher caste Hindus disrupts the conference. The plot works up to this climax with not-so predictable or likely results, thus making its claims on the "nouveau roman" genre. The link between the ruler and the ruled is the newspaper reporter Thamby, caught in the grind between the British master and the locals who show no signs of "mastering" themselves. The characters and events of this story are entirely fictitious in construction and narration. Even if the names of the streets, buildings and lay of the land pinpoint the venue in Kuala-Lumpur, these are not material to the time of the action. For instance, there was no university in the city before Independence was attained in 1957. At that time, the vast majority of Hindu Indians in Malaysia and Singapore was Tamil, and those that constituted the articulate and educated majority among them were - disproportionately - from Jaffna in the old Ceylon. The first nominated "Member" of Education in the Cabinet was a Jaffnese Tamil, and the first nominated U.N. Representative was an Indian Tamil Brahmin. Other more sizeable Indian communities were made up of Sikhs, Punjabis, Bengalees, and Malayalees from India. The conference of Indians or Hindus is an event, however, not unique to this novel, since Indians in Malaysia continue to meet on a national level for various reasons. Any similarity to other such meetings is purely coincidental, with the exception of the character of the Swami which is founded on a real-life Swami who had a big role to play at one Hindu conference in Kuala Lumpur. The venue of one incident at the end, however, shifts to London in keeping with the logical movement of the story in a colonial protectorate. Here reality and the imaginary intermingle for effect. The novel was conceived and written in a month during July-August 1967 in Madrid, Spain. Some slight changes in the language and style have also been introduced by the author since then. (c) T. Wignesan - Paris, July/August 1967

5.0 out of 5 stars Literary criticism (2009) by Adam Donaldson Powell
5.0 out of 5 stars By Adam Donaldson Powell, 2009.
Reviewed in the United States on December 4, 2015
T. Wignesan employs the same fundamental signature storytelling style in his novel published in the same year by Cyberwit : “The Night Soil Man”. In “The Night Soil Man” T. Wignesan weaves yet another tale using social commentary and sarcasm – and inciting more than a few snickers from this reviewer. Mr. Wignesan is no stand-up comic, but rather an intellectual who uses his insight and command of language to question the status quo. His wit is – surely – a formidable weapon; and his ability to wield that sword so adeptly makes him a dangerous man (un homme dangereux).

“The Night Soil Man” is a unique work : well-crafted and well-written. Chapter two features a bit of stream of consciousness style writing that I would compare to the writing of William Burroughs at its best. Here the author describes shit in a social context and using a riveting narrative style that only contemporary Asian bad boy authors can master. Without giving the story line away, I can promise the reader a roller-coaster ride deep into the depths of societal muck and complete with sensory stimulation.

This novel has the artistic quality of effortlessness – achieving natural balance between the difficult and the relatively simple, and possessing an aplomb that suggests that the work has essentially written itself.

I recommend “The Night Soil Man” both as a cultural and social study and as a thought-provoking story with relevance beyond its time period and geographical setting.

In conclusion, I would describe the spirit of these two (including: "Victorian (pen in cheek) Vignettes...) ambitious literary works that insist upon not taking themselves too seriously by quoting Henri Régnier – whose words appear in Maurice Ravel’s dedication at the top of the score of his Valses nobles et sentimentales : “le plaisir délicieux et toujours nouveau d’une occupation inutile” (the delightful and always novel pleasure of a useless occupation). Reviewed by Adam Donaldson Powell


Simply great ! Reviewed by Dr. Deepak Kumar Verma
"Simply great ! I just started reading the novel "Night Soil Man" and one by one all the six chapters were completed ! I have got(ten) interested in reading other works by the author, T. Wignesan. Searching..." (read at the www.stateless.freehosting.net site)February 10, 2004 - 04:25:03 (GMT Time)" Dr. Deepak Kumar Verma. Professor at the National Institute of Social Sciences, M'bow, India." - quoted on the book cover flap.