This book presents a comprehensive study of nearly 100 of Kaaroor’s short stories. Kaaroor Neelakanta Pillai is one among the Big Six of the ‘new wave’ in Malayalam literature which began in the mid-1940s. The Big Six and their immediate followers wrote about the common man, peasants, pavement-dwellers, fishermen, rickshaw-pullers, underpaid school teachers — their lives, aspirations and vulnerabilities. By treating Kaaroor’s stories as case studies, the book takes a sociological approach to understanding the representation of a wide array of themes: romantic overtones, erotic pursuits, marital episodes, issues of family, lives of children, behavioural patterns, shades of greed, the idea of spirituality and politics in Malayalam literature.