[5] After completing a degree in chemistry at SN College, Kollam, Kakkanadan started his career as a school teacher in Kerala.

Ignatius, his elder brother, was a journalist and was an editorial board member of Janayugom and Malayalam magazine Soviet Nadu.

[6] Kakkanadan's younger brother, Thampi, was also a writer who authored several short stories and published a novel- Kalapathinte Orma.

Kakkanadan's early works broke new ground in Malayalam fiction on account of their earnest exploration of deeper realities of life by employing a new diction and narrative methods.

Though vast majority of readers initially found it hard to accept the modern trends ushered in by Kakkanadan and some of his contemporaries, their works soon created a new sensibility marking a radical break from the past.

Though labelled by his readers as a formidable ultramodern Malayalam writer, Kakkanadan himself was of the view that modernism in literature has no convincing rationale.

Moving with ease from apocalyptic visions to tantric imagery, he made his works representative of an important strand in the larger modernist trends in arts, literature and culture in India.

Sex, like violence, was a leitmotif in many of his works; at times as a resonant chant, at others as an explosive outpouring of raw human power that transcends both the demonic and the divine.

Kakkanadan's major novels are Sakshi (1967), Ezham Mudra (1968), Vasoori (1968), Ushnamekhala (1969), Kozhi (1971), Parankimala (1971), Ajnathayude Thaazhvara (1972), Innaleyude Nizhal (1974), Adiyaravu (1975), Orotha (1982), Ee Naaykkalute Lokam (1983) and Barsaathi (1986).

His most noted short story collections are Yuddhaavasaanam (1969), Purathekkulla Vazhi (1970), Aswathamaavinte Chiri (1979), Sreechakram (1981), Alwar Thirunagarile Pannikal (1989), Uchayillaatha Oru Divasam (1989) and Jaappaana Pukayila (2005).