Madhavikutty, who also wrote as Kamala Das and Kamala Surayya, is a writer and poet who wrote in Malayalam and English. She was part of a generation of Indian writers whose work centred on personal experiences, and her short stories, poetry, memoirs, and essays brought her respect and notoriety in equal measures. She wrote openly and frankly about female sexual desire and the experience of being an Indian woman, bringing the aesthetic, spiritual dimensions of the female experience to the front and centre of Indian literature. Her poetry collections included Summer in Calcutta (1965), The Descendants (1967), and The Old Playhouse, and Other Poems (1973). Subsequent English-language works included the novel Alphabet of Lust (1976) and the short stories “A Doll for the Child Prostitute” (1977) and “Padmavati the Harlot” (1992). Notable among her many Malayalam works were the short-story collection Thanuppu (1967; “Cold”) and the memoir Balyakalasmaranakal (1987; “Memories of Childhood”). Perhaps her best-known work was an autobiography, which first appeared as a series of columns in the weekly Malayalanadu, then in Malayalam as Ente Katha (1973), and finally in English as My Story (1976). Madhavikutty received many literary awards, including the Asian World Prize for Literature in 1985.