When the Writer is Outside History and Politics: “A Passage North”

By Vihanga Perera In 1983, Julia Leslie, a British writer, published a novel set in the years immediately after the youth uprising in April 1971. The book was titled Perahera and followed a story where a group of locals conspired to grab power by stealing the tooth relic of Gautama Buddha. The miscreants planned to...

Prefects and Peeved Teachers: Education in Rukshan Dissanayake’s “Not So Perfect”

By Vihanga Perera School politics and pressure on young students – mostly, students from affluent families and/or cosmopolitan settings – is one of the main thematic focuses in Rukshan Dissanayake’s short story collection, Not So Perfect (2022). At least five stories out of the collection of ten deals with this area that seems to engage...

“Oddumaa” and the Mysterious Sinhalese Girlfriend of Santhan’s Creative World

By Vihanga Perera Originally composed in Tamil 1972, Ayathurai Santhan’s “Oddumaa” is a key jigsaw piece of the writer’s corpus of fiction; in particular, the stories he has published in English since the end of the Sri Lankan Civil Conflict in 2009. Being translated to English by S. Rajasingham, “Oddumaa” is one of four stories...

Quintus Fernando’s “Celibacy Factor”

Being Priest and Hu/Man: The Struggle for Innocence in Quintus Fernando’s Celibacy Factor By Gayathri Madhurangi Hewagama This diary was written in the nineteen sixties when Sri Lanka was still innocent (7). A Catholic priest’s need for recognition as a hu/man is the central struggle in Quintus G. Fernando’s Celibacy Factor: From the Diary of...

The Slain Journalist Lasantha Muthukumarana in Shaveen Bandaranayake’s Groundswell

Who is Lasantha? The Slain Journalist Lasantha Muthukumarana in Shaveen Bandaranayake’s Groundswell By Vihanga Perera The defining feature of Shaveen Bandaranayake’s novella Groundswell (2021) is the intrigue the writer evokes by creating several characters who echo high-profile men and women and household names. Apart from this feature – and despite references to two political murders...

Manuka Wijesinghe’s Experiments with Idiom in “Like Moths to a Flame”

A New Idiom to Narrate the Tamil: Manuka Wijesinghe’s Like Moths to a Flame.   By Vihanga Perera Manuka Wijesinghe’s fourth novel Like Moths to a Flame revisits the familiar terrain in her work – that of the post-1956 nation – through a lens completely different to the one used in her earlier books, Monsoons...

Politics of Sexuality in Vihanga Perera’s “Bodies in Art”

‘Sex Militant’ or 'Militarized Sex': Politics of Sexuality in Vihanga Perera’s Bodies in Art By Aruni Walker Before examining the politics of sexuality in Vihanga Perera’s novel Bodies in Art, it is imperative that the terms in focus – that of “sex militant” and “militarized sex” – are established in the sense they are used...

Lionel Bopage’s Lookalike in Upali Mahaliyana’s “Just One Slip”

Lionel Bopage's Lookalike in Upali Mahaliyana's Just One Slip By Vihanga Perera Upali Mahaliyana’s Just One Slip (2021) is concerned with the story of Asitha Wijesundara, the kid brother of Hemachandra who, at the height of his career in the Ceylon Civil Service, serves as a Government Agent. Being the eldest of a southern family...

Upali Mahaliyana’s “Youthful Escapades”

Complex Sex: the Guilt of Samadara Angunawala in Upali Mahaliyana's Youthful Escapades By Vihanga Perera Youthful Escapades is Upali Mahaliyana’s third novel in a career which, since 2018, has produced four notable works. These, in turn, have promoted Mahaliyana in two Gratiaen shortlists, and a triumph each at the Godage Awards and the State Literary...

Women Who Come Between Men in Romesh Gunesekera’s Fiction.

Women Who Come Between Men in Romesh Gunesekera’s Reef and Suncatcher. By Vihanga Perera Disruption of male relationships with a distinct homoerotic energy by a woman/girl whose name starts with the letter N is shared in common by both Reef and Suncatcher, two novels the Sri Lankan-born writer Romesh Gunesekera published in 1994 and 2019....