Award-winning writer P. Valsala, 85, passed away at a private hospital in Kozhikode on Tuesday night. Doctors attributed the cause of death to cardiac failure.
Ms. Valasala was one of the few women writers in Malayalam who achieved literary renown. In her decades-long writing career, Ms Valsala bagged the Kerala Sahitya Akademi Award, Ezhuthachan Puraskaram and Muttathu Varkey Award.
Her peers in literature reckoned her a stylist, given her unique rendering of novels and short stories. A former headmistress, Ms. Valasala took up social causes championed by the left. She was deemed a left-leaning writer. Nevertheless, she drew left-wing criticism for her purported bouts of dalliance with the far-right during her autumn years.
