Modern Malayalam literature is rich, especially in Poetry and Short Story. In those categories, it is easy to pick few world-class works.
Among the modern fiction writers I like Zacharia, MT Vasudevan Nair,NS Madhavan, Anand, M Mukundan, OV Vijayan, Basheer, SK Pottekat, etc. My list of poets include K Sachidandan, Kadammanitta Ramakrishnan, and numerous little known poets who publish in weeklies. The difficult-to-translate, provocative poems of Ramakrishnan will purge you of sins and bring out true human being in you. The former is widely travelled across the globe, and his works are worldly and represent Malayalam peotry in world forums.
Here are some gems from the Malayalam literature, mostly poems