Sri Lanka

Introduction

Obituaries were rare when the compiler of this bibliography began this task in 1995; however, they have appeared with sad regularity in the last few years, especially with pioneer post-Independence writers and academics passing away in the fullness of time. What is particularly agonizing about the demise of Qadri Ismail, Professor in English at the University of Minnesota, is that he belonged to a younger generation and was my student at the University of Peradeniya. Ismail was something of an enfant terrible as a student in addition to being irreverent and iconoclastic, so teaching him was a nerve-wracking and intimidating experience, even for senior professors. He graduated with first-class honours (the first in years) and soon after wrote an article in The Lanka Guardian lambasting the very Department from which he had obtained his degree. This resulted in a memorable, sometimes toxic, debate that continued for months in subsequent issues. Ismail joined The Sunday Times and was wounded in covering the IPKF’s intervention during the Sri Lankan conflict in the North as a result of which he had to live with a bullet embedded in his neck for the rest of his days. He was accepted to Columbia, did his PhD under Edward Said and was also taught by influential critics like Gayathri Spivak. Abiding by Sri Lanka: On Peace, Place and Postcoloniality (2005) and Culture and Eurocentricism (Disruptions) (2015) are his principal publications, and he has also edited collections in addition to contributing several journal articles and chapters in books. In Abiding by Sri Lanka, he analyses the work of prominent historians and political scientists, including K. M. de Silva and A. Jeyaratnam Wilson, and concludes that, though both “abide by Sri Lanka” in their own way, their insistence on Sinhala or Tamil nationalist agendas being the root cause for the National Question in Sri Lanka undermine their positions. He then moves to literature, namely two texts on the conflict — When Memory Dies (1997) by Ambalavaner Sivanandan and Rasanayagam’s Last Riot by Ernest Macintyre (1993) — to demonstrate that creative writing is more effective in eschewing polarized Sinhala and Tamil nationalistic positions and working towards other solutions. The concluding sections, using postcolonial and other forms of criticism, are a virtual diatribe against the positions taken by historians and social scientists. The book has been critiqued for dismantling existing structures without providing replacements but is a key publication in the field. For his part, Ismail “abided by Sri Lanka” in a cluster of ways. He visited his country of origin each year, made peace with his former Department in accepting an invitation to give a formal lecture in 2007, at which he acknowledged the sound grounding his Department had given him during his undergraduate career, stepped in at my request as Chair of SLACLALS to give a keynote address at an international conference when the designated academic pulled out at the last moment, and helped the then editor of Phoenix to bring out two issues when the Commonwealth Foundation ceased to fund it. On the 5 November 2021, the Department of English, University of Minnesota, organised a poignant memorial on Zoom chaired by Head of Department Professor Andrew Elfenbein. The international cast of participants included family and friends; Walter Perera, as his undergraduate teacher; Gayathri Spivak and Rob Nixon, as graduate level teachers; colleagues and students. While acknowledging his often abrasive, always uncompromising stance on a host of issues, the participants agreed that this intimidating exterior could not disguise the brilliant scholar, consummate teacher, loyal friend and the modern-day renaissance polymath he became, given his in-depth knowledge of literature, the Arts, politics, social activism, journalism and sport. He will be sorely missed.

Two other literary figures in Sri Lanka died in 2021: Chitra Premaratna-Stuiver — poet, writer, painter, and photographer — and Trixie Marthenesz, a pioneering Sri Lankan nurse who wrote several authoritative books on nursing and was also a writer of fiction. They were both senior members of the English Writers Collective and would contribute regularly to its journal, Channels.

The literary highlight of the year was undoubtedly the publication of Anuk Arudpragasam’s Booker-Prize shortlisted novel, A Passage North, following his debut novel, The Story of a Brief Marriage, which won the DSC Prize a few years earlier. Given its title, those familiar with the previous novel would anticipate a narrative dealing in some way with the north of Sri Lanka, and they would be accurate; furthermore, they would also expect a work that is deeply philosophical since this was the approach in his first book. A Passage, in fact, exceeds such expectations because almost every major incident or human interaction therein is accompanied by obsessive philosophical musings. Despite these points of convergence, however, the two novels are different in multitudinous ways. Dinesh, in The Story, is cast as a young man from Jaffna, not worldly wise and perhaps conservative, who has lost his mother to shelling while fleeing during the last stages of the war. Ganga, whom he is persuaded to marry by her father, is equally inexperienced. The father bemoans that the wedding cannot be conducted according to tradition because of their perilous situation. Although Krishan, in A Passage, has lost his father to the bomb the LTTE had detonated at the Central Bank in Colombo, the novel is situated in a post-war period. Not only has he never resided in the north but, as a graduate student in New Delhi, he has also led a bohemian existence that included substance abuse and heavy drinking; furthermore, his activist girlfriend Anjum has had a female lover before him — a far cry from the world of The Story. It is partially because of her influence that he gives up his graduate studies and joins an NGO in Sri Lanka which enables him to help Tamils suffering from post-war trauma in the North. The title of the novel is based on Krishan’s journey to Jaffna for the funeral of Rani, who had been grievously affected by the loss of two sons during the conflict, although he realises at the end that

he’s traversed not any physical distance that day but rather some vast psychic distance inside him, that he’s been advancing not from the island’s south to its north but from the south of his mind to its own distant northern reaches.

He has brought Rani to be a companion to his grandmother in Colombo, but she has died under strange circumstances during a visit to Jaffna. A Journey North seems to be a response to the many critics who lauded the previous novel for being apolitical. That Arudpragasam is unabashed in focussing on the atrocities perpetrated by the State through its forces and his admiration for the LTTE, especially its female combatants, is patent. The novel’s greatest strengths include its in-depth portrayal of character relationships (Krishan-Anjum, Rani-Appamma and Dharshika-Phuhal) and to illustrate the diverse ways in which trauma affects individuals. What is incredible is that all this is achieved without any dialogue — the entire work is in the form of an interior monologue. The novel loses focus, however, when it adds elements such as a long account of the life of Prince Siddhartha and the burning of Rani’s funeral pyre with a detailed rendition of the Hindu funeral rites that preceded the latter. The novel was commended extensively in the world press. One hopes he will continue to write fiction because his talent is obvious.

Michelle de Kretser, who is the most prolific of current Sri Lankan expatriate authors, brought out another novel, Scary Monsters, in 2021. Those searching for a direct connection between the novel and the David Bowie song, “Scary Monsters (and Super Creeps)”, which inspired the title, will be disappointed. The song is referenced in the Lili part of the story when she hallucinates on several occasions of being accosted, raped or murdered; the Lyle section brings in the idea of a woman being abandoned (Ivy who is set to be euthanized because Chanel wants to utilize her mother-in-law’s money to move to a more upscale neighbourhood). But the thrust of the song is best understood in the general sense of disorientation and the chaotic nature of life around them. Some critics laud the unusual format of the novel which they feel sustains Lili’s comment on expatriation: “When my family emigrated, it felt as if we’d been stood on our heads”. It has two front covers depicting the lives of Lili and Lyle requiring the reader to turn the book upside down to switch from one perspective to the other. There are, in addition, two sets of acknowledgements and copyright pages, and there are those who consider these experiments a form of gimmickry. What binds the two stories together is that Lili and Lyle are immigrants to Australia from an Asian country (the life of Ivy and Lyle in their country of origin suggests that they immigrated from Sri Lanka) and both are sensitive to issues affecting immigrants. Lyle’s story is futuristic, situated as it is in an Australia where Islam has been banned, laws are enacted that would enable immigrants to be deported for flimsy reasons, the Amendment that allows individuals who are not terminally ill to be euthanized (a celebration, not an occasion for mourning) and environmental issues are so dire that second generation Australian expatriates (Lyle’s and Chanel’s children for instance) prefer to live outside Australia. Lyle works in an Australian government department which monitors the correspondence of individuals who may constitute a security threat. He longs to be “truly” Australian in this Orwellian environment, suppresses his Asian heritage, and conducts himself in such a way that he will always be in middle management and, therefore, not a threat to others’ ambitions. His other preoccupations are his ambitious wife Chanel, aging mother Ivy, and “difficult” children. That the situation depicted is an Australia of the near future as opposed to one that is distant could be gauged by references to the current global pandemic. Lily works as an English teacher in the south of France in the early 1980s while awaiting the response to her application for graduate study in England. This section of the novel reminds one in parts of Henry Miller’s Quiet Days in Clichy, with the major difference being that Lily is determined to become a “Bold, Intelligent Woman”, a la Simone de Beauvoir, although such an ambition is placed in jeopardy by her personal demons, the left wing (not always reliable) artsy folks she befriends and the social structures she must live in. While her concern for the treatment meted out to North African immigrants and her resentment at being regarded with ambivalence because she is not a “proper” Australian on account of her skin colour align her story with Lyle’s, this is decidedly a literary counterpoint to the other section, with numerous references to art, theatre, fiction and figures such as Camus, Sartre, Althusser and Barthes. Those who are familiar with de Kretser’s biography and previous work will discern how she has been influenced once again by her emigration from Sri Lanka to Australia with her parents in the 1970s, her life in Australia as an expatriate and her graduate study in France.

Although one of his stories was brought into the Advanced Level Examination Syllabus, Alagu Subramaniam is largely unknown as a Sri Lankan the word author, so the publication of Closing Time: With Added Personal Notes 50 years after it appeared affords one the opportunity to examine his qualities as a writer. Despite the content being described as 17 stories, some are reminiscences or essays, and all but two stories are situated in England before and during the Second World War, with the other two in Ceylon. A Sri Lankan literary antecedent in fiction would be James Wijeyeratne’s The Exiles (1926). But while the earlier writer observes an almost late-Victorian sense of decorum in characterising the loneliness, financial hardship, racial discrimination and other challenges faced by his main character and others from the colonies in London, Subramaniam is more direct in his social critique. It is unsurprising that he was associated with the Bloomsbury group during his time as a lawyer and political agitator for Independence in the colonies in the UK. The author’s greatest strength is his ability to capture a plethora of moods in his stories: the sense of waste in “Closing Time”, when alcoholism and finding ways to keep warm drives Mohan to his death; hypocrisy in “Ceylon Tea”, when Natasha warns Mohan that she has been properly brought up and will not succumb to his desires, only to force herself on him when given a packet of tea for her birthday; and pathos intermingled with humour in “The Kid”, when Lala tries to induce a newcomer to London to marry the 20-something “kid” (perhaps his mistress) that he has been “looking after” prior to leaving for India to rejoin his wife. Given the multiple sexual escapades between British women and visitors from the colonies depicted here, it would appear that conditions have certainly changed from the world of The Exiles where such women were unapproachable. But racism is prevalent in subtle ways, like the landlady not giving Mohan a room to himself in “Single Room”, and blatantly in “The Food of Love”, with a neighbour yelling “Please close your window! We can’t stand the stinking smell of onions and garlic. We are neither dirty Jews, nor blasted Indians, nor stinking Spaniards” when Prem Perera makes curry. The quality of the stories is uneven; the dialogue is clumsy and simplistic in “Single Room” and the anticlimactic ending forced in “Closing Time”. Occasional aesthetic considerations notwithstanding, the importance of this collection can be gauged by it possibly being the only Sri Lankan work that captures the life of colonials in the “mother country” just before and during the Second World War.

Vijita Fernando has frequented the Sri Lankan bibliography often over the years but usually in relation to her translations; in 2021, however, she brought out Afterwards and Other Stories. Nine of these stories have appeared in other collections or journals but the rest are hitherto unpublished. Many of the stories make for convincing if grim reading. They convey how a generation was lost to the 1971 insurgency, how addiction to drugs has ruined families and individuals, the unenviable situation experienced by Sri Lankan housemaids in the middle-east (illtreated by employers, their remittances to Sri Lanka squandered by unfaithful husbands at home, and considered “whores” by locals who assume that these women have sold their bodies to earn dollars) and the suffering of parents as their sons enlist in the army to fight the LTTE in the north only to have them returned in coffins, to cite just some of the concerns. The previously unpublished title story “Afterwards” initially captures Senaka’s idyllic campus life at Peradeniya “where the river lazed its way through the verdant green, the bougainvillea spilled over the secluded pathways and the jacaranda blooms spattered the winding drive, like purple rain”. His girlfriend Sumudu loved him very much and he had every chance of academic success. However, his expectations are shattered for a complex of reasons. He befriends Kumar towards whom he develops homo-erotic feelings and Kumar subsequently seduces him into joining the insurgency. The rebellion is ruthlessly crushed, the revolutionaries, including Kumar, are killed and, with all his hopes dashed, Senaka’s life is reduced to the “drudgery” of a bus conductor job. It is on seeing some young female passengers that he is transported to his idyllic days on campus and the aftermath. What is ironic and poignant here is that at the end he “felt safer in the bus. The punching machine was a load he could cheerfully bear. The passengers did not taunt him with their eyes nor beckon him with inexorable love. No closed roads and sentries barred his way there”.

Sri Lankan poets in English have often been diffident in characterising sex in their work. Those, like Ashley Halpé, who broke new ground with Silent Arbiters, were unfairly reviled by colleagues who did not have the courage to be similarly candid in their poetry. Such prudery or conservatism is no longer a factor, but it is still rare for poets to be too forthright in their output, especially when the experiences being articulated are palpably personal. Tinaz Amit’s first collection Anarva is refreshingly frank, although her poetry is not as explicit as that of Halpé. The passion depicted in Amit’s work is not meant to titillate but to explore crucial facets of human behaviour. Although the poems are categorised as Love, Loss and Lifeline, these motifs often intersect. “The Binding Band”, which appears in the second section, is a teasingly ambiguous poem. While the protagonist refers to “Heated nights, overflowing passion / Thrusting and Throbbing deep / Reaching a dizzying climax / Ecstatic and Enchanting”, her mood changes when she looks at her wedding ring. One is not certain if the ring, glanced at during the throes of passion, serves to remind her that this “illicit” relationship will not last, or whether it is meant as a comment on marriage generally. A major strength of Amit’s poetry is her willingness to experiment with form. From shaping the last stanza of “To Love” to represent an abyss through the rhetorical flourish of beginning every one of the eight stanzas that constitute “Teach Me” with these words to employing repetition to capture synchrony in lovemaking, “This Day. This Night. / This Day. This Night. / A perfect place. / A perfect place” in “Beating the Rhythm”, Amit demonstrates a versatility that is rare for a person who has brought out her first collection. As an English-honours graduate from the University of Peradeniya, she has made positive use of her academic background in formulating some of her poems. “The Pages She Wrote”, where a personified “Destiny” carefully narrativizes the story of the two characters only for a gust of wind to blow several pages away, is one such example. Since only some of the pages are recovered, when reassembled, the planned order becomes messy and not what was originally envisaged. Although the situations are totally different, there are some structural similarities to Shakespeare’s Sonnet XX and George Herbert’s “The Pulley”, in which nature and God, respectively, play a major role. The poems are on a plethora of themes such as lust, thwarted love, loneliness, ambivalent feelings towards a partner, regret, reminiscence, suffering, gratitude and much more. But perhaps the most touching poem is “Breathing”, which is appropriately included in “Lifeline”. Since it begins in language that is reminiscent of the poems in previous sections, the reader anticipates a poem on sex and passion, but it turns out to be about her six-year-old. Having gone through the anxiety of a difficult caesarean during which it was uncertain if the baby would survive, she is comforted that the child’s “heart beats perfectly” now and is the only reason “Why I still breathe” despite moments of anxiety that still prompt her to seek assurance during the child’s slumbers. My one quibble is that poor printing and sometimes shoddy formatting do not do justice to her poems.

The year under review also saw the production of good collections by poets who are not well known. Ameena Cader praises the 60 poems in Yasmine Jaldin’s White Lilies for Mother “for the simplicity of style and beauty of expression”. Her poetry has also been commended by veteran critics like K.S. Sivakumaran.

Manel Eriyagama’s Jewels: A Collection of Sinhala Short Stories by Contemporary Writers is one of the most impressive works of translation in the year under review. In her foreword, Eriyagama wonders if she would be able to do justice to the “range of themes . . . as well as the variations in style, structure, and presentation” in the short stories she has chosen. She need not have feared because Jewels is one of the best collections of its kind. Translating the work of one author is challenge enough but to translate 14 writers with divergent styles who render a multiplicity of motifs is particularly difficult. But Eriyagama has prevailed. She has sensibly not substituted expressions for some Sinhala words but used the original and given the explanation at the end of the individual stories. Many of the stories in the collection are compelling. Not only are they rendered by contemporary writers, but the concerns are current as well; a cursory glance at some of the stories will establish this fact. “That Happiness Is Still There” contrasts the approaches to motherhood by Madam and her domestic Wimalawathi, the former burdened by the expectation of having to produce a male to maintain the family line, the latter overjoyed with the daughter she has been blessed with. “The Winds of Change” captures the challenges placed on domestic happiness on account of economic necessity. Lasith and Sandalatha maintain a modest restaurant by the main road which provides home cooked meals. Facilities are so basic that when the narrator requests to use the toilet he is directed to the one attached to their bedroom. In his last visit to this establishment, he discovers that Sandalatha and her new-born have been despatched to another location while their marital bed is now let out to couples for casual sex. In “Counselling Service”, Chintha, a counsellor, finds her own life mirrored in that of her patient Sumana, despite the latter being from a lower stratum of society. Their husbands are abusive in addition to cheating on their wives with other women. The session on the couch is equally beneficial to counsellor and patient and, at the end,

With an effort Chintha restrained the words that rose to her lips to thank Sumana. The two of them straightened up and gazed at each other’s faces like two women who had undergone a change. Both faces reflected a feeling of gratitude and friendship towards each other.

Some of the other stories focus on the traumas faced by those who return to the north to see their childhood homes ravaged by the war; on a woman and her husband strategizing to have her estranged parents reconcile and on the way Buddhist triumphalism has impacted on those who observe the philosophy in a traditional manner. While the translations of straightforward narratives are well done, those that require complex time shifts and intricate thought processes are not so successful. Liyanage Amarakeerthi’s “The Map around Our House”, with its postmodernist structure, leaves readers somewhat confused, because Eriyagama has been unable to convey its complex narrative structure.

An online workshop on literary translation, arguably the first of its kind in the country, was held on 6 March 2021. Carmen Wickramagamage, who designed its format, reports thus:

“Titled ‘Doubling Ourselves’, the Workshop was organized by the Gratiaen Trust in partnership with the Department of English, University of Peradeniya. Bringing together resource persons and participants from across the country for the purpose of promoting literary translation from Sinhala and Tamil into English, the Workshop was an attempt on the part of the Gratiaen Trust to promote literary translation in keeping with the vision of its founder, Michael Ondaatje, who established the H.A.I. Goonetileke Prize for Translation (administered by the Gratiaen Trust and awarded every two years) in 2003. As the current Chairperson of the Gratiaen Trust mentioned in her opening remarks at the Workshop, Ondaatje saw translation as an important bridge for bringing communities together, particularly in the case of Sri Lanka, and his words on the award of the first Gratiaen Prize for literature in 1993 that she quoted at the Workshop evidence this interest:

 Translations of literature…allow us to find our own stories in far-away places, distant languages and different cultures. In a country like ours, these different places may actually be under our very nose, but because we are unfortunately largely monolingual, the English reader cannot access Sinhala or Tamil literature and vice versa.

The Workshop included novices as well as practising translators, thus aiming to spark an interest in translation among those new to it as an important activity in its own right. To this end, the workshop components were supported by two keynote addresses by Mr. Naveen Kishore, founder of Seagull Books in Kolkata, India, who highlighted the role of translation as resistance and subversion in addition to expanding our worlds and shared with the audience valuable information on what he called the ‘nuts and bolts’ of publishing in translation”.

The Gratiaen Trust appointed a panel comprising Shyam Selvadurai, Sri Lankan expatriate novelist (creative writer); Maduranga Kalugampitiya, Head of Department of English, University of Peradeniyac (academic) and Keshani Jayawardena, banker and LSE graduate (informed reader) with the Gratiaen Trust reaching its 30^th year. The long list for 2021 comprised Uvini Atukorale, “A Place Called Home”; Marianne David, “All of the Oranges”; Ashok Ferrey, The Unmarriageable Man; Shehan Karunatilaka, “The Birth Lottery”; Chiara Mandulee Mendis, “The Lanka Box”; Rizvina Morseth de Alwis, “Talking to the Sky” and Vivimarie Vanderpoorten “Pictures, I Couldn’t Take”. It was indeed a star-studded field, with two previous winners and others who were shortlisted multiple times. All but Ferrey’s book are manuscripts. In shortlisting four entries, the judges submitted the following citations:

For the remarkable ability to imagine a vivid storyline out of the mundane to depict the lives of a whole diverse cast of characters, for stories which tell of Sri Lankans from all cultures and walks of life through the lens of their relationships and their displacement from home, “A Place Called Home” by Uvini Atukorale.

For technical and linguistic brilliance, for vivid characterisations of authentic and unforgettable characters, for the capturing of multiple locations and the instantly recognizable depictions of 1980s London and Colombo, for the seamless integration of the ordinary with the bizarre, for its nuanced telling of a story of complicated grief and of coming of age with tenderness and humour, for its scope of ambition, The Unmarriageble Man by Ashok Ferry.

For capturing with depth and poignancy the world of the young in Sri Lanka with the clear-eyed perspective of the youth of today, for dialogue and language which so cleverly capture the unique way we Sri Lankans talk and think, for the adept use of laugh-out-loud humour, for vivid descriptions of experiences which are self-consciously Lankan, “The Lanka Box” by Chiara Mandulee Mendis.

For excellence in combining the political and personal in complex and subtle ways, for grappling in human terms with the pressing issues around Islamophobia and the Muslim community in Sri Lanka told through the vivid dual voices of mother and daughter, for the skilful manner in which suspense is maintained until the last minute through a nonlinear progression of the plot, “Talking to the Sky” by Rizvina Morseth de Alwis.

At a simple celebration which was held “live” after three years in which the Trust also returned to its original home for the main event, the Barefoot Gallery, Ashok Ferry was named the winner of the Gratiaen Prize for 2021. In winning the prize after having being shortlisted on several occasions, he followed in the footsteps of Malinda Seneviratne, Vihanga Perera and Jean Arasanayagam. Ferry, on one occasion, even submitted under the name of Saroj Sinnethamby, thinking that measure would help his cause. This led to some embarrassment for both him and the Trust. Ferry walked on to the stage and announced Sinnethamby was not able to attend the shortlisting and then (at the main event) admitted that he was the Sinnethamby in question. This episode prompted the Trust to change its rules for those who wished to send in entries under a pseudonym. As Ferry informed the audience after the announcement of the 2021 winner, he had submitted his work for prizes around the world over the years and done well but had never won anything, so this was a turning point in his career.

2021 represented a watershed year for the Sri Lankan University system which celebrated 100 years of its existence. Established as a college of the University of London in 1921, it became the University of Ceylon in 1942 and (except for the Medical Faculty) was relocated, in 1952, from Colombo to Peradeniya, where it functioned as the only University in the island before the controversial reforms of 1972 saw the creation of several universities under the aegis of the University Grants Commission. It was the UGC that instituted the idea of producing a volume to mark the centenary of the Humanities and the Social Sciences. Despite some technical issues and the unfortunate decision to exclude line histories, rare photos and other data that the contributors were initially encouraged to compile, this book will serve as an important record. The chapters that are relevant to the present Introduction are those that deal with English Studies and English Language Teaching (ELT). Since ELT was non-existent in the early days (it was assumed that all those following courses at the University were proficient), it became a necessity only in the early 1960s, when those who had studied in Sinhala and Tamil in high school were admitted in the universities. ELT was initially taught or administered by the main English Departments, until ELT units and Departments of English Language Teaching were set up. There is some duplication in the two chapters but taken together they provide an important history of one of the ranking Departments in the country. Despite being circumscribed by the UCL syllabus initially, English Departments gradually expanded their mission, vision and fields of study. Peradeniya and Kelaniya, in particular, offered courses on some Commonwealth authors before they were taught in Departments in these writers’ own countries. Subsequently, postcolonial literature, critical theory and Sri Lankan writing in English were made part of the curriculum. Peradeniya, which is the direct heir to the University College that was situated in Colombo, has been associated with reputed first- and second-generation English academics such as E. F. C. Ludowyk, Hector Passé, Ashley Halpé, Yasmine Gooneratne, D.C. R. A. Goonetilleke and Thiru Kandiah, and creative writers like Ernest MacIntyre and Jean Arasanayagam who have featured in these pages over the years.