In 2015, the Tamil writer Perumal Murugan committed literary suicide. “Perumal Murugan the writer is dead,” he posted on his Facebook page. “Leave him alone.” He instructed his publishers to stop selling his work and readers to burn his books.

For months, he had been hounded by right-wing Hindu groups that had latched onto an old novel of his, “One Part Woman” (2010), about a religious festival in which childless women were permitted to sleep with men other than their husbands, in the hope of becoming pregnant. There would be no stigma; for one night, all men were to be considered gods, and any child conceived semi-divine. Although Murugan insisted he found evidence of the practice in his home state of Tamil Nadu, fundamentalists organized an efficient campaign accusing him of dishonoring Hindu women. The book was torched in the streets, and there were calls for a ban. Officials coerced an apology from the author, who was eventually forced to flee his village altogether. He became, he said, “a walking corpse.”

In a benchmark ruling, however, the Madras High Court in Chennai, India, upheld Murugan’s right to free expression. He came back from the dead — and into the glare of sudden publicity. Five of his books are being translated into English, among other languages. The combustible “One Part Woman,” translated by Aniruddhan Vasudevan, has just been published in the United States.

For all the commotion it caused, it feels shockingly tame. Set about a century ago, this simple story with a powerful undertow centers on a couple, Kali and Ponna, living in a small farming community in the Kongu region in south India, where Murugan’s books are usually set. Even after 12 years, they remain madly in love and erotically bound up in each other (much to the annoyance of their neighbors). “Ponna’s body just dragged him into itself and presented him with whatever he needed,” Kali thinks. “It even gave, volitionally, what he did not ask for, what he did not even know existed.”