Methil Radhakrishnan Wins Kerala's 2026 Ezhuthachan Puraskaram

Methil Radhakrishnan has been chosen for the 2026 Ezhuthachan Puraskaram, the Kerala government's highest literary honour. Culture minister P.C. Vishnunadh announced the award at a press conference in Thiruvananthapuram on November 1, The Hindu reported. The award carries a cash prize of ₹5 lakh, a citation and a plaque.

Radhakrishnan is the 34th writer to receive it. The state instituted the award in 1993, and its first recipient was Sooranad Kunjan Pillai, according to The New Indian Express.

A unanimous jury

The poet K.G. Sankara Pillai, who received the award last year, chaired this year's jury. Kalpetta Narayanan, K. Satchidanandan and Sarah Joseph sat with him, and M.P. Surendran served as member secretary. The choice was unanimous.

In its assessment the jury described Radhakrishnan as a writer who brought a new sensibility to Malayalam literature, and as a notable presence in the language's post-modern writing who works science, philosophy and psychology into his fiction. It said he writes novels, short stories, poetry and scientific articles, with one underlying philosophy running through all of them. The jury also linked the choice to the award's namesake, saying Radhakrishnan fully deserved an honour named after the writer who created a new poetic language for Malayalam.

The work

His major works include the novel Sooryavamsam and short fiction such as Sangeetham Oru Samayakalayanu, Kayarinte Attam and Nayakanmar Shavapedakathil. Other books named in the reports include Bra, Albatrossinte Karachil, Dylan Thomasinte Panthu and Daivam Manushyan Yanthram. The jury pointed to his interest in world poetry, philosophy, ecology, music, anthropology, history and entomology as what gives his writing its depth.

Mathrubhumi traced his start to a critique of Ponkunnam Varkey's autobiography that he wrote for the Navayugam weekly while waiting for his school results. His first short story, Octopussinte Shavam, came at 18, and he began Sooryavamsam in the final year of his degree and finished it while studying for his master's at Kerala Varma College, Thrissur.

Born in 1944 at Puthiyankam in Alathur, Palakkad district, he spent much of his working life outside literature. He was for many years head of the computer department at a Norwegian shipping company and later a senior technical writer at the Madras branch of Nest Software USA, The New Indian Express reported.

A writer wary of prizes

Radhakrishnan has long kept his distance from literary competitions. Mathrubhumi recalled an earlier interview in which he said, "I could never view writing as a competition." In the same interview he argued that "every writer plays a completely different game," and compared writing to nature, "where there is no comparison."

Photo: Methil Radhakrishnan in 2011. Photo by Vm devadas, via Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA 3.0.