Today’s post comes to you from Ankitha Venkataram
“A People Without a Story Disappear“
Giants is an Indian young adult novel about our protagonist, Kato, a mute thirteen-year-old boy, who is chosen by Kene, a God in Naga folklore, to be a storyteller. It is set in a tiny village in Nagaland—a state in North East India, often overlooked in mainstream narratives— in the 1940s. It is a time of great change, when tradition and modernity collide against each other, and battles between colonial powers reach the doorstep of Kato’s small and rich world.
Stories are central to this story. As Kato thinks in one section of the book, A people without a story disappear. So it is a matter of puzzlement to Kato that Kene chooses him, a mute boy, to tell stories when he physically cannot.
Giants is a story about many things. It deals with the tensions between tradition and change, the nurturing power of love and community, and the transformative power of stories, among other themes. It is also only 240 pages, and as a reader, you feel as if you have walked to the end of this great book together with Kato, wiser and transformed.
The novel is lush and gorgeously written, with passages in Kato’s point of view making you wonder why he does not see his own potential. Here is his description of the spring season:
Spring in the Naga mountains isn’t polite and gentle. It isn’t quaint and doesn’t bashfully ask to be let in. No, it is instead like the relative that comes over once a year, knocks your door down and drinks all of your rice beer while telling you the most rib-tickling jokes. So riotous are the colours and scents that the waking daytimes leak into the dreams, or maybe it’s the other way around.
Giants is also rich in its use of form and literary devices. Huthuka Sumi uses magical realism to bring alive the myths of Nagaland in a way that has rarely been explored in Indian children’s literature.
At its heart, though, Giants is a coming-of-age story about a 13-year-old boy who feels like an outsider, who is unkind, cowardly, and quick-tempered in his worst moments, and really has to try to become the person he wants to be. He is a flawed and endearing protagonist that teenagers will relate to.
Giants is a book that young and older teenagers should be introduced to. Dr Rudine Sims Bishop described books as windows, mirrors, and sliding glass doors. Books offer views of worlds, real or imagined. They can also be sliding glass doors for readers to walk through and be a part of the beautiful world an author creates. They may also reflect the human experience to us. It is rare for a book to be all these things at once, and Giants is such a book.
TITLE: Giants
AUTHOR: Huthuka Sumi
- Listen to him doing this short reading from Giants on Instagram.
ILLUSTRATOR: Canato Jimo, picture book writer & illustrator, as well as Art Director at Pratham Books, India. Read this Jan. 29, 2025 interview with him.
Both Huthuka Sumi and Canato Jimo are from the state of Nagaland, in North East India.
PUBLISHER: HarperCollins Publishers India, July 2025 (252 pages). ISBN: 9789369899319
Read excerpt here.
AWARDS: Winner of the 2025 Atta Galatta – Bangalore Literature Festival — Book Prize — Children’s Fiction category.
Ankitha Venkataram is a teacher-librarian and writer living in Bengaluru, India. She currently works as a Senior School Reading Specialist at Neev Academy, Bengaluru, India. Previously, she worked in the roles of content developer and learning designer for different corporate companies. You can find her on Linkedin.
Disclaimer: The opinions and views expressed are the author’s and do not necessarily reflect those of GLLI.
Global Literature in Libraries Initiative 