In his brilliant new novel, Perumal Murugan paints a bucolic yet menacing portrait of the rural lives of India's farming community through the story of a helpless young animal lost in a world it naively misunderstands. A farmer in Tamil Nadu is watching the sun set over his village one evening when a mysterious stranger, a giant man, appears on the horizon. He offers the farmer a black goat kid who is the runt of the litter, surely too frail to survive. The farmer and his wife take care of the young she-goat, whom they name Poonachi, and soon the little goat is bounding with joy and growing prodigiously. Intoxicating passages from the goat's perspective offer a bawdy and earthy view of animal existence and a refreshing portrayal of the natural world. But Poonachi's life is not destined to be a rural idyll-dangers lurk around every corner, and may sometimes come from surprising places, including a government that is supposed to protect the weak and needy. With allegorical resonance for contemporary society and examining hierarchies of caste and color, The Story of a Goat is a provocative but heartwarming fable from a world-class storyteller.