It might be a truth universally acknowledged that a single man in possession of a good fortune, or at least a piece of land, must be in want of a wife, but Marimuthu's path to marriage is strewn with obstacles big and small. Inward-looking, painfully awkward, desperately lonely and deeply earnest, Marimuthu is fuelled by constant rejection into an unforgettable and transformative matrimonial quest. Enter a series of marriage brokers, horoscopes, infatuations, refusals and 'bride-seeing' expeditions gone awry, which lead Marimuthu to a constant re-evaluation of his marital prospects. But this is no comedy of manners, and before long we find ourselves reckoning with questions of agricultural change, hierarchies of caste, the values of older generations and the grim antecedents of Marimuthu's poor prospects, as decades of sex-selective abortion have destroyed the fabric of his community and its demographics.
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