The last quarter of the 19th century saw the birth of the novel in Malayalam. It has been pointed out that the novel arose in Kerala as in other regions of India, not just because of European influence through English education nut chiefly because the condition that existed in India at this time were similar to those in England in the 17th and 18th centuries which favoured the growth of this new form of writing called the novel.
It would perhaps be more correct to say that both internal socio-educational conditions and external influence combined to produce and popularize this new genre. It was perhaps not wholly transplanted as a finished product into Malayalam: the existence of the printing press, the growth of a literate reading public, the development of the habit of buying books, the increasing requirements of educational institutions and libraries, the rise in the status of women (Appu Nedungadi, the author of Kundalatha, was also the founder of the society for the promotion of the education of women; Chandu Menon also thought of women as potential readers of his works), and the gradual penetration of democratic ideas and liberalism into the social fabric: these were essential factors which by their conjunction could favour the growth of the novel in Malayalam.
The question which is the first novel in Malayalam can be answered only if we agree on the definition of the novel. Ghataka Vadham (the slayer slain) by Mrs. Collins, Pullelikunchu by Archdeacon Koshy, his translation of Bunyan's The Pilgrim's Progress, Ayilyam Tirunal's translation of Meenaketanacharitam, Kerala Varma's transalation of Akbar - these certainly have a historical importance. The use of prose for long narratives based on non-puranic themes was itself of great importance. Appu Nedungadi's Kundalata (1887) marks an important stage in the development of prose fiction in Malayalam. The events are supposed to have taken place in a far-off place and the characters bear more or less outlandish names like Kundalata, Aghoranathan, Ramakisoran and Taranatan. Pullelikunchu has greater realism as far as physical details are concerned. Parts of Kundalata read like the prose romances which in England and other countries of Europe preceded the novel. Appu Nedungadi may have been influenced by Bengali novels too, since the novel as the term is understood in the modern world appeared earlier in Bengali than in other Indian languages. The air was thick with expectations of the birth of the great novel all through the 1880's when in the last year of the decade O. Chandu Menon brought out his Indulekha.