U. A. Khader

Ussangaantakathu Abdul Khader (16 November 193512 December 2020) was an Indian author. He published in Malayalam, including novels, novellas, short stories, travelogues and non-fiction. His works have been translated to various languages including English, Hindi and Kannada. He was a recipient of the Sahitya Akademi Award in 2009 for his novella Thrikkottur Novellakal and had earlier received the Kerala Sahitya Akademi Award in 1984 for Thrikkottur Peruma.

Early life Khader was born on 16 November 1935, in Bilin, Mon State, near Rangoon (now Yangon) in today's Myanmar. His father Ussangaantakathu Moithootti Haji had migrated to Burma from Quilandy, in the southern Indian region of Malabar. His mother, Mamaidi, was of Burmese origin. His mother died three days after his birth, from small pox. Describing his early days, he talked about the dilemma of straddling two distinct cultures. He also talked of his classmates finding him strange because of his features. His association with Koya would be a turning point, introducing him to books and writing, starting with a copy of Vaikom Muhammed Basheer's Balyakalasakhi. Career Khader started his writing career by writing for magazines and journals. His first story was published in the Malayalam weekly, Chandrika, in 1953. The story was based on a real-life incident in which the author had to sell his watch to buy a dinner set as a wedding present for a friend. Khader had written quite harshly about his father and step-mother in the original draft which was later tempered when he handed over the story to C. H. Mohammed Koya, who had it tweaked before publishing it in Chandrika. Khader would take Koya's message and leave his own personal stories out of his works through his career, with the note that the story was not a space for the author's personal grief, but should instead talk to society. Over his career, he wrote over 70 books spanning short stories, fiction and non-fiction novels, and travelogues. Some of his notable works included Thrikkottur Peruma, Aghorasivam, Arabikadalinte, Arippravinte Premam, Chempavizham, Katha Pole Jeevitham, Kalasam, Khuraisikkoottam, and Krishnamaniyile Theenaalam, Raziya Sultana, Shathru, Srishtavinte Khajana, and Theeram. His books were translated into many languages including English, Kannada, Tamil, and Hindi.

His works often focused on the Northern Malabar region of Kerala and the rural life here, with stories building on local myths, customs, and rituals, including the nagappattu and theyyam. He notably shunned modernism in his works while sticking to local stories. He would say about his choice of stories, "Modernism pushed away the readers at the base. Writers were writing of urban life and alienation that the common man could not relate to." Earlier in 2019, the Kerala state government had decided to cover his treatment expenses.