Social Concerns & Buddhist Reflections in Suvimalee Karunaratna’s “The Mandara Flower Salon”

By Subhagya Liyanage The Mandara Flower Salon and Other Stories (2004) - one of Suvimalee Karunaratna's last collections in a career in a four-decade long creative writing career before the writer took robes - explores some salient socio-cultural features of Sri Lanka through a host of characters from many walks of life. Accompanying this social...

Promise Half Realized: Chanis Fernando-Boisard’s “The Ayah and Other Stories”

By Subhagya Liyanage What is most remarkable about Chanis Fernando-Boisard’s collection of short stories, The Ayah and Other Stories, is its range with regard to both setting and content. The stories in are set in a heady mix of exotic locales from France to Somalia and Laos. Its chief drawback, however, is that many of...

“Weaver At Her Loom”: A Satisfactory Collection

By Subhagya Liyanage Ransiri Menike Silva’s Weaver at her Loom is an engaging, masterfully narrated collection of short stories which was awarded the State Literary Award for that genre in 2007. Despite a couple of stories that seem insubstantial (particularly seeming so in a collection of only 10 narratives), many of the stories are creative...

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...

Strengths and Weaknesses of “Swimming Against the Tide”

By Subhagya Liyanage Sunila Nanayakkara’s Swimming Against the Tide is an engaging collection of short stories exploring diverse themes drawing on the writer’s experiences as a teacher in the Seychelles and Nigeria. It discusses critical issues ranging from drug peddling to child abuse and the vulnerabilities of old age. Although a readable collection, the stories...

“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...

Nationalism, Caste, and Sinnathamby’s “Letchimey”

Nationalism, Caste, and Sinnathamby's Letchimey. By Vihanga Perera In one of the opening passages of Letchimey (1898), by “Sinnathamby”, the eponymous character is identified as follows: Her forehead was streaked with white ash and her throat with sandal wood paste, blessed by the King’s High Priest, for such is the custom of pious Hindoos; and...

Sunethra Rajakarunanayake’s “Sambol+”

The Authentic Ingredients of Sunethra Rajakarunanayake's Sambol+ By Subhagya Liyanage For a writer who is principally well-known for her work in Sinhala, Sunethra Rajakarunanayake makes a strong impact with her short story collection Sambol+ (2003), also shortlisted for the Gratiaen Prize that year. The stories carry a palpably Sri Lankan flavour but the thematic content...

“Cry for Me a Little”: Mariam Riza, Better Activist than Creative Writer.

Cry for Me a Little: Mariam Riza, Better Activist than Creative Writer By Subhagya Liyanage In Cry For Me a Little: Stories of the Souls (2011), a collection of short stories that suffers greatly from poor editing, Mariam Riza nonetheless demonstrates a certain versatility by engaging in societal issues in a certain raw and brutal...

Lalitha Witanachchi: “The Wind Blows Over the Hills”.

The Range and Scope of Lalitha Witanachchi's The Wind Blows Over the Hills. By Subhagya Liyanage In 2016, Lalitha Witanachchi - teacher, award-winning journalist and book author - passed away aged 95. Her The Wind Blows Over the Hills shared (with Carl Muller's The Jam Fruit Tree) the inaugural Gratiaen Prize in 1993. Throughout her...