Moolayil Narayana Menon Vijayan

Born: 8 June 1930

Died: 3 October 2007

• He was an Indian academic, orator, columnist and writer of Malayalam literature.
• Known for his leftist ideals and oratorical skills, he was the president of the Purogamana Kala Sahitya Sangham (Progressive Association for Art and Letters) and served as the editor of Deshabhimani.
• He published a number of books of which Chithayile Velicham (The Light in the Pyre) received the Kerala Sahitya Akademi Award for Literary Criticism in 1982.
• Most of his publications are compilations of his speeches and He was considered to be a powerful orator.
• He used psychology, Marxism and social science as tools to analyse life and literature.
• Some prominent writers, including M. Krishnan Nair and Thinakkal Padmanabhan, have said that his writings are difficult to understand, as he does not follow conventional grammatical structures.
• V. C. Sreejan criticizes his style, arguing that it is densely figurative, hence vague and often meaningless. he was a pioneer of the use of psychological criticism in Malayalam literature, and influenced contemporary Kerala culture.
• His works were nominated on several occasions for literary awards, but in keeping with a general aversion to institutionalism, he rejected any state-sponsored awards that he won.

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