Kazhakinte Ithihasam is a seminal work that addressed some of the deeper issues of an enlightened

individual's personal and social existence in the post-independence period. “Everything in this novel —
the theme, the characters, the language, the style, the narration, the way myth and reality, realism and
fantasy mix — was ingenious and unprecedented in Malayalam”- T P Rajeevan

The underlying ethos of Khasak is its existential angst. Ravi's inner disquiet, uncharted journeys and
"search for sarai" become Vijayan's as well. For Vijayan, writing Khasak was a meticulous engagement
with experiences, and, at the same time, a "painful and long drawn-out" disengagement with the
ideologies he had been subscribing to till then.

Vijayan was aware that a new language was vital for telling something unsaid before. For this, he made
use of all that was available in the repertoire of Malayalam: slang, dialects, politically and philosophically
charged coinages, metaphysical interpolations, and so on. This was an attempt at refining and equipping
the language for reflecting the inner as well the outer.

Vijayan's brilliance lies in his capability to go back and forth in time: from history to mythology, from
dates to datelessness, and from the real to beyond what is apparently real. These anachronistic flights,
sometimes tragic, sometimes comic, sometimes allegorical, and sometimes darkly satirical and
humorous, led him to the realisation that what is propagated as history is a bunch of fairy tales. And,
what he searched for was an alternative to the authority of power.

Dharmapuranam marks the completion of Vijayan's metamorphosis into a spiritual outsider. The work,
while verbally exposing the excess filth, obscenity and horror in power politics, explores the "concept of
the teacher and incarnation", which he carried forward to exalted levels in his subsequent works
like Gurusagaram (Eternity of Grace) and Pravachakente Vazhi (The way of the Prophet).

Before him, as M. Mukundan, another prominent novelist of Vijayan's generation observed, "there were
only writers in Malayalam. But, Vijayan is the first to assimilate philosophical and political insights in
creative writing".