Sri Lanka

Introduction

It would be difficult to find too many Sri Lankans, or those with some knowledge about the country, who would dispute the claim that 2022 was variously the most catastrophic, energizing, challenging and traumatic in the island’s recent history. A multi-ethnic, multi-social, multigenerational group of individuals with a deep sense of political awareness began a movement called the Aragalaya, which loosely translated means revolt, or rebellion. Camped in strategic places in Colombo and elsewhere, they demanded the resignation of the president, prime minister, and the cabinet for pauperising the country with alleged corruption, nepotism and mismanagement that had resulted in a forex crisis and in turn a scarcity of essentials. The mission was accomplished to the extent that resignations were effected but not before reprisals were launched against those who were in the camps. The peaceful protestors were attacked by government supporters which led to those in opposition parties hijacking the movement, as it were. Anarchy reigned as the homes of cabinet members, government parliamentarians and the prime minister who was appointed when his predecessor resigned were torched and eventually the presidential mansion occupied. It was Sri Lanka’s Bastille moment. There was considerable mayhem before a degree of normality was restored.

The outlook for the country remains bleak in a socio-political and economic context but in October 2022 it was given a fillip via the literary world when Shehan Karunatilaka became the first Lankan to win the Booker Prize outright for his novel The Seven Moons of Maali Almeida. This achievement, after Anuk Arudpragasam was shortlisted in 2021 for A Passage North, is indicative, one would hope, that writing in English originating from Sri Lanka (as opposed to the expatriate community) is finally gaining international recognition. For years, Michael Ondaatje who was born in Sri Lanka but emigrated at the age of fourteen in the 1950s and was joint winner of the Booker for the English Patient, was touted as Sri Lanka’s only winner. Karunatilaka has had a relatively smooth rite of passage to fame as a writer. He was shortlisted for the Gratiaen prize on several occasions commencing in 1999 and won the award for the manuscript “Chinaman: The Legend of Pradeep Mathew.” The manuscript which was subsequently published in India, the UK and the US won the DSC Prize and the Commonwealth Book Prize besides being longlisted for the Booker. He has also participated in many workshops on creative writing and been invited to book fairs across the globe. The award was received with much celebration in the island but was not without controversy in some quarters. Karunaratne’s manuscript “Chats with the Dead” was shortlisted for the Gratiaen Prize and subsequently published by Penguin India in 2020. An author’s note to The Seven Moons declares that “an earlier version of the novel was published in the Indian subcontinent under the title ‘Chats with the Dead’ in January 2021” and subsequently “revised” to make the text more accessible to “a global audience” unacquainted and unfamiliar with Sri Lankan politics of the 1980s, its mythology and folklore. These “edits turned to rewrites,” the author adds, and insists that the second version has benefitted from these “extra months of craft and editorial rigour.” This note has resulted in some lively exchanges on social media with some literary aficionados declining to celebrate his award until a rigorous comparative study was made of the two novels. A few critics were also uncomfortable with the word “rewrites” as it suggested that the novel was made more “palatable” to a Western audience in the second version.

Be that as it may, Karunatilaka’s triumph is a signal honour for the author and his country of birth, although it is a savage, unrelenting satire on the same country. Despite being enlivened from time to time by his characteristic humour and gestures of humanity, the tone of the book is deeply disturbing with there being little hope for the island’s future. What is ironic is that Karunatilaka, an Aragalaya supporter, was congratulated and “claimed” by current politicians whom he loathes, as evidenced in his many public pronouncements. Since Chats with the Dead has already been analysed in a previous issue of the JCL bibliography, lengthy analysis of its subsequent avatar would be superfluous. There are several reviews listed below that will provide more insight.

The Booker news obscured another Sri Lankan achievement in the Arts in April when Hiran Abeysekera won the prize for the Best Actor at the Lawrence Olivier Awards held at the Royal Albert Hall for his role in the stage adaptation of Yaan Martel’s Booker Prize winning novel The Life of Pi. Another accomplishment that should have been mentioned in the previous year’s bibliography is Kanya D’Almeida winning the 2021 Commonwealth short story competition, perhaps the first Sri Lankan to do so, for “I Cleaned the —.”

The inaugural conference on Commonwealth Literature at Leeds in 1964 resulted in two pleasing outcomes — the establishment of The Journal of Commonwealth Literature and the founding of the Association for Commonwealth Literature and Language Studies with regional branches across the Commonwealth. The triennial conferences held in various parts of the Commonwealth (even during a war in Sri Lanka in 1995) were greatly anticipated and produced outstanding papers and publications. The 19th ACLALS Triennial Conference “Ruptured Commons” held from the 11^th to the 15^th of July at Ryerson University should have been another highlight of the year. But the continuing pandemic, high plane ticket prices and the daunting challenges of a “hybrid” conference meant that it was one of the most poorly attended ACLALS conferences in living memory. It was especially distressing that regional chairs from India, East Africa and other branches could not attend because of the inordinate time taken to process visas to Canada. The Chair of SLACLALS was one of the few holding this position in the Global South who was physically present at the triennial. Consequently, the “Commonwealth sense of family” that was cherished by Norman Jeffares, the virtual founder of ACLALS, was sadly missing. Some of those who applied for visas to attend the conference received their authorization to travel months after the confab ended. That members following online were scattered across the globe made it difficult to follow the proceedings given the time zone differences. Lihini Boteju (University of Kelaniya), “Re-negotiating the Boundaries of Humanity: A Posthuman Study of Globalization in the Series Altered Carbon”; Shashikala Assella (University of Kelaniya), “Reimagining the Past – Retelling the Common”; Tara Senanayake (University of Peradeniya) “Staging the Body as Speaking Subject: Reading Conflict and Embodied Violence in the Novels of Shehan Karunatilaka and Anuk Arudpragasam”; and Walter Perera (University of Peradeniya), “From The Story of A Brief Marriage to A Passage North: A Paradigm Shift in Anuk Arudpragasam’s Fiction?” are the Sri Lankans whose papers were accepted for presentation.

The Gratiaen Prize gala is the blue riband event in the English Literary calendar in Sri Lanka. This year’s ceremony was looked forward to with anticipation because it was the first proper awards night after 2019 when Covid-19 took its toll on public activities. Last year, the Gratiaen Trust celebrated 30 years as an organization and this year the Trust saw fit to make special mention of the 30^th awarding of the prize. The ceremony was held for the first time at the residence of the British High Commissioner. Romesh Gunesekera, the famed Sri Lankan expatriate author, was the chair of the judging panel. His colleagues were Kaushalya Perera of the University of Colombo as academic and Sukanya Wignaraja as informed general reader.

The judges’ citations of the shortlisted entries are as follows:

Isurunie Mallawaararachchi, Flowers Teach Me to Let Go

A book of poems that combined the personal with larger issues in a distinctive voice. Refreshingly frank, the poems take a wry look at relationships, social norms and expectations and challenge commonly held assumptions and attitudes.

Chiranthi Rajapakse, “Keeping Time and Other Stories”

This book of short stories gave us glimpses of contemporary life that stayed with us and grew stronger with every reading. Skilfully crafted, the stories capture the richness and depth of everyday lives, and invite the reader to reflect on the complexities of deceptively ordinary experiences.

Yudhanjaya Wijeratne, “The Wretched and the Damned”

A bold challenge and a book of the times, reflecting the upheavals of Sri Lanka’s immediate past and present. Bringing a set of fantastic heroes to the Sri Lankan landscape, the book deals with possible futures, impossible solutions, and urgently paced action.

Shirani Rajapakse, Samsara

A collection of poems that invites the reader to muse on love and self, of journeys taken and not, of youth and growing old. This is a book that experiments with form, showing a connection to the world around us.

Although the citations refer to all entries as books, only Samsara and Flowers Teach Me to Let Go are published. In jointly bestowing the Gratiaen to Chiranthi Rajapakse for “Keeping Time and Other Stories” and Yudhanjaya Wijeratne for “The Wretched and the Damned”, the organisers broke a rule that had been sacrosanct for about twenty years. In the early years of the Gratiaen Prize, there were a plethora of joint winners which led to the Trust adopting the rule that the prize could be awarded to just one entry. Although the issues in judging a multi-genre prize were acknowledged, it was felt that a joint award devalued the prize in many ways and was a “cop out” by the judges, as it were. The Trust held firm for years despite pleas by many panelists who found it difficult to separate two entries or had differences of opinion regarding winners. To all intents the rule has not been changed. One can only assume, therefore, that the judges have prevailed on the Trust to suspend the rule for this occasion.

The HAI Goonetileke Prize for Translation was also offered by the Trust in 2022. Unlike the Gratiaen, it is not awarded every year because the number of translations that are submitted is comparatively small, so translations completed over the previous two or three years are accepted. The winner was Manel Eriyagama for her translation from Sinhala into English entitled Jewels: A Collection of Sinhala Short Stories by Contemporary Writers. An assessment of this collection is found in the introduction to the previous JCL Bibliography.

It is ironic indeed that the most famous living resident Sri Lankan writer in English, Shehan Karunatilaka, and one of the most popular expatriate writers, Shyam Selvadurai, would compose novels in the same year that would have the word moon/s in their titles — The Seven Moons of Maali Almeida and Mansions of the Moon, respectively. But the concerns of the two novels could not be more different. Recreating the interactions between Prince Siddhartha, who would become the Buddha, and his wife Yasodhara is nothing new (Arudpragasam’s A Journey North includes such a scene), but no Sri Lankan writer in English has attempted an entire novel in this vein. Selvadurai’s narrative, which is rendered through the perspective of Yashodara, demonstrates the suffering she underwent when he abandoned her in the pursuit of renunciation. Her own desire for selfhood clashes with his pursuits. In fairness, although the story is given from her point of view, Siddhartha’s anxieties and frustrations which lead to tensions with his wife are also treated with some sympathy. There is no doubt, however, that centrality is given to Yasodhara’s role, especially in the leadership she provides when women entreat the Buddha to allow for the ordination of women. His response is a compromise of sorts: they could be ordained provided they follow the dictates of the male hierarchy. Selvadurai’s introducing several characters rather than focusing solely on the Siddhartha/Yashodara relationship has made Mansions of the Moon something of a “baggy monster” of a novel, but it allows him to bring in socio-political elements not covered by other authors who have written fiction, poetry and drama based on this legend.

Another Sri Lankan expatriate who contributed to the literary scene was Germany-based Manuka Wijesinghe. Like her previous work, Monsoons and Potholes, Theravada Man and Sinhala Only, Like Moths to a Flame does not shy away from controversy. It is a very ambitious novel with several subplots, innumerable themes, and multitudinous characters. In some ways, Like Moths to a Flame resembles Ambalavaner Sivanandan’s When Memory Dies. See, for instance interactions among the many communities in Sri Lanka, the changes to these relationships over generations and the emergence of the National Question (or the ethnic conflict), which was one consequence of the polarisation among communities. Vihanga Perera, a writer and academic, says, in reviewing the work for this introduction:

Like Moths to a Flame is Manuka Wijesinghe’s fourth novel, in which the writer revisits a recurrent theme in her work, that of modern nation formation in Sri Lanka, with a focus on the country’s northern and eastern locales, their Tamil and Muslim cultural traditions, and their historical sense. It contributes to a range of political questions the writer had evoked in her previous fiction but with palpable liberties at experiment as seen in her attempt to arrange the book to align with temperaments found in ancient Tamil Sangam poetry in the six sections of the book: Peruntinai, Palai, Kurinci, Marutham, Neydhal, and Mullai. The novel also departs from commonplace assumptions of cultural identity—at least, as Tamil and Muslim identity of the north and east are assumed in Sri Lanka’s “south”, the modern nation’s political centre—to complicate history and memory of local communities. The novel’s cultural frame, therefore, brings on [a] complex interplay between a host of characters that includes an east-coast Sufi Muslim — the Bawa — leading a life of worship and devotion, without being restricted by narrow readings of religion; the Bawa’s wife Parvatiamma, an east-coast Mukkavar woman outcasted by her marriage to an outsider; their fiercely independent-minded daughter Mariamma; and Mariamma’s husband constantly at friction with the demands of tradition, Velupillai. In an intricate weave, the novel leads through changes in Tamil society and politics — and societal aspirations — from the 1930s to the outbreak of struggles for nationalist liberation in the 1970s and 1980s.

Given that the novel is published in a post-conflict period and written by a writer identified as a Sinhalese Buddhist from “(the Sri Lankan) south,” Like Moths to a Flame brings on a creative intent to empathize with and draw to centre the cultural and historical consciousness of a people who had been discouraged by political differences within the modern nation. The novel also demonstrates awareness and need for new/experimental narrative frames and historical imaginations to enhance representation of the complex lifestyles that, over the years, had been equally simplified by narratives of Sinhalese and Tamil nationalisms.

While Wijesinghe seems to be in control of her narrative and well-researched in the cultural aspects infused in her novel, it will be interesting to note the book’s critical reception in Sri Lanka’s north and east — which, at present, is not clearly documented.

Vihanga Perera’s Epistles Elegies Imitations was one of the important collections of poetry to appear in 2022. The former Gratiaen winner was longlisted for the same competition again for this work. Dhanuka Bandara, a contemporary of Perera, has this to say:

Perera is one of Sri Lanka’s most prolific writers, who increasingly keeps his subject-matter closer to the personal rather than the political. Therefore, Epistles Elegies Imitations, much like the earlier Love and Protest remains steadfast to issues such as love and loss, expectations versus reality, fragility and ephemerality of human relationships. He explores all such concerns with occasional poignance, and flashes of poetic ingenuity. The very first poem in the collection itself, “Having Come Home,” conveys the overall “mood” of the collection; one that is doleful, brooding, and elegiac. The poet constantly draws attention to the passage of time, the myriad changes that it has wrought and the irrevocability of the past. A poem that is representative of the collection’s general longing for what has passed is “Talking of Departed Nymphs,” which is possibly also a nod at T. S. Eliot. Similarly, “Like a Paperback You Left,” bitterly comments upon the betrayal of a loved one of yore, laments the capriciousness of, presumably, female nature. The poems in the collection often come across as conversational; the poet directly addresses his subject — who appears to have somehow evaded, thwarted, or disappointed him — often over tea or coffee. Poems such as “In the Cafe,” “Siren in the Night,” “Meeting in a Time of Scarcity” are amongst the poems that exemplify the poet’s inter-subjective technique which seeks to draw the reader into the wrought emotional life of the poet and his companions. There are indeed many “tête à tête” poems therein solidly establishing this collection in the realm of the personal while revealing the poet’s predilection for comforting hot beverages. However, the collection is not entirely devoid of the political. Vihanga Perera, who is based in Kandy, has remained something of an oddity throughout his career; an outsider in Sri Lankan writing in English which largely emanates from Colombo (and expatriate writing that emerges from various Western metropolitan centres). “Katharine’s Forwarding Address” is a poem that fields the poet’s criticism of class and geographical politics with considerable subtlety. In the poem, the poet finds himself in a used bookstore abroad (Australia) where there are several well-known Sri Lankan titles such as Nayomi Munaweera’s What Lies Between Us. In the poem, the poet critiques the class politics that underpin what could be perhaps termed as “mainstream” Sri Lankan literary production in English. It should also be noted that differing from much of Sri Lankan writing in English that depicts political violence in Sri Lanka and indulges in the exotic, Perera remains committed to representing the here and the now, the mundane and regular lived life of the average Sri Lankan, which is, ironically enough, refreshing. However, despite the occasional clever turn of phrase, an image or a metaphor that strikes, Epistle Elegies Imitations is one of Perera’s less satisfying endeavours. While there could very well be readers who are sympathetic to the excessively personal tone of the collection, it is also likely to exasperate those seeking a political message or a more enriching aesthetic experience in poetry that transcends the personal.

Although advertised as her first publication, Conquering Karma is not the first instance in which Gayathri Hewagama has written fiction. She won the Sri Lanka Association for Commonwealth Literature and Commonwealth Studies short story competition for one of the stories that subsequently appeared in this collection. As the author contends, in an interview with Vanessa Mendis, the collection, which is in two parts, is “a ‘mixbag’” [sic] in which “she wanted to explore a variety of writing styles within this one book, partly because of her academic background in literature, as well as the fact that it kept her from feeling monotony throughout the writing process”. To my mind the first part in which the stories are rendered in the realist vein are more accessible than the second where the author experiments with magic realism, surrealism and other forms of writing. The Buddhist ideal of renunciation, especially as it pertains to women, and the societal norms that dictate that women should passively accept victimhood because it is part of their karma are especially critiqued in the earlier stories. The title story is particularly engaging. It details the life and thoughts of Dhamsadhee, who feels obliged to give up her career as a lecturer in English at the University of Peradeniya after her daughter falls from a balcony and needs considerable care for the rest of her days. It is her lot to sacrifice her career for her daughter: “‘Who could love a child better than her own mother? Who would care for an invalid better than a woman? See how willingly and selflessly mothers sacrifice for their children!?’ applauded the wide wide world” (41). Her husband Mythil is incapable of understanding her position and too impractical to help in looking after Lalindi. There is a suggestion that Lalindi is basically selfish, resents it when her mother tries to engage in one of her own passions which is reading, and feels that Dhamsadhee’s sole occupation should be her daughter. The story follows a trajectory in which Dhamsadhee gradually unlearns all these stereotypes. In the final scene, she attends to her daughter but then purposefully takes out a book and “read aloud from it of a woman who had snatched her life back from the whims of the parasites”. Less successful in structure but important for the issues it deals with is “At Mara’s Playground”. Here, Hewagama characterises the challenges faced by Gautami who gives up her lay life to become the bhikkuni Dhammapali Silmatha. In sometimes sombre, at other times humorous, vein, she details how those in this female order, where renunciation is an ideal, cope with their desire for food. However, the indictment of the patriarchal system in which the male chief monks belittle the calling of this female order and thwart the Bhikkunis whenever possible is devastating. Another brief episode captures the way a Bhikkuni almost gives in to suppressed sexual desire: “With palpitating heart, she nuzzled herself inside the soft, warm flesh of the body that was providing her with comfort. Sucking in the familiar sweat-oil-skin smell . . . For a moment, Meheni Meththa remained where she was. Body on Body. Yet in the next moment, she sprung away from Dhammapali Silmatha. Shocked. Repulsed. Tear stung.” The other stories in the section deal with poverty and those in abusive relationships. Located in the second part, “2024” is Hewagama’s version of Orwell’s 1984, perhaps, but instead of showing how human relationships are affected by dictatorial regimes, she focusses on the regime itself. Employing surreal, sometimes scatological imagery, she demonstrates how corrupt ministers and parliamentarians in this island “Somewhere in the Indian Ocean” are ravaged by a pestilence which affects them despite their wealth and support from the “eheyyas” (toadies) and are ultimately destroyed. “2024” depends for its effect on satire, dystopian fiction and the parable form and, along with others in the section, occasionally draws too much attention to the devices used which sometimes impacts on quality. But there can be no doubt whatsoever that Conquering Karma is a worthy addition to the corpus of Sri Lankan writing in English.

Despite Professors Yasmine Gooneratne and Ashley Halpé being accomplished poets, there was a belief in Sri Lanka at one time that an English degree and teaching in the university system stifled one’s poetic creativity. Such positions have been proved wrong recently with individuals such as Hewagama (already mentioned) bringing out worthy works of poetry and fiction. Aruni Walker is another graduate of Peradeniya’s English Department. Her maiden collection of poetry Odyssea is extremely intense and personal, which is borne out in the subtitle, “A Journey Inbound”. However, Walker insists that it would be untrue to say that “the collection is totally personal” in a social media exchange. Vihanga Perera in an essay refers to the Classical allusions in Walker’s poetry which align her work with that of Patrick Fernando and others who invoke the Graeco-Roman tradition in Sri Lankan English poetry — a valid point. But her poetry works best when related to the personal. Take “The Forlorn Bard,” where she declares, “How sad it is/when the poet in me surfaces,/mirroring my own reflection/with hidden scars and unhealed wounds/which thus speak louder than words.” The poem “To the Teenager, When Infatuation Ceases” is one of the most powerful in the collection as it captures the challenges of a Sinhala/Tamil marriage. The Sinhala speaker is sensitive to her partner’s troubled background. While his relatives had been burned alive by Sinhala mobs, he had not found peace in the Tamil North either because of the activities of the Tamil Tigers. His life is complicated further when he falls for a “lioness” in the South. Her conclusion in retrospect that “you were pressed between my saliva and kerosene — /that smothered your kind” is poignant indeed. “The Enterprise” is also about marriage but contrasts the expectations (How we, in adult naivety,/thought marriage in merriment, with booze to the brim — filled and re-filled”), with the reality which is much more challenging. “Detachment is Attachment” is best described as a harrowing poem in which the expectant mother and the foetus are involved in a conversation. There is much warmth on both sides, but expectations are shattered when she realizes her incapacities: “How well I was ready, yet, I can’t conceive /to inflate a soul, then, lifeless; now, how I hide my breasts in shame — heavy and hanging;/when the womb cries out in hollowness.” Walker resists being lyrical about life at the University of Peradeniya as many of her peers do and instead focusses on the intellectual arrogance of some and the romances that ended in disappointment. This tone is mirrored in “Where Brains Are Branded with New Money” which is both a critique of her current home in the Middle East and a longing for familiar faces back in her real home: “I look for her face;/coloured by those fading wrinkles/stencilled on which,/a story spent, shared, spared.” In her poetry, Walker demonstrates an interesting mix of experimentation with a reliance on poetic devices that are no longer in vogue. An example of the latter is “Evening Dawns,” where her penchant for alliteration gets the better of her: “veracious vibes are voiced,” “deepest dejections are drawn,” “doesn’t dawn drench” and “doubloon doesn’t dawn.” Such strategies take away from the overall quality of the work.

Shashikala Assella’s career as an academic has taken her from Sabaragamuwa University, through Jawaharlal Nehru University and the University of Nottingham to the Department of English in Kelaniya where she is the current Head of Department. Her interactions with people in different contexts and locales have indubitably contributed to a compact, if somewhat uneven, first collection of poetry, a collection that was longlisted for the Gratiaen Award while yet a manuscript. “To the Rude Never-to-Be Father-in-Law” highlights the socio-cultural dilemmas faced by educated, independent, young Sri Lankan women who wish to pursue higher studies abroad: settle for a spouse from “An illustrious family background of/Boasted nothingness” or find a true partner; embark on graduate study or be seduced by the “immigrant dream” of a husband working for an established company living in a complete house (when the reality is “a small apartment with a contracted work agreement”) so long as one forgoes the ambition of academic advancement because those in a patriarchal set-up assume that too much education “makes loose women”. While implying that this “Icarus self” could result in a future without a conventionally acceptable partner, the poem suggests that further education must be a priority for this woman. The title is ironic because in the body of the poem it is the man who makes the accusation that his potential daughter-in-law is being rude. While “For Asifa” memorializes the abduction, rape and murder of an 8-year-old in a temple in India, it also draws a parallel with the speaker’s own harassment in a bus as a child. On the latter occasion, “there were others around her/silent, powerful, looking away” ignoring her plight, whereas in the former, “At least those statues were lifeless, powerless/And probably crying silent tears”. The parallels and contrasts between the two incidents are subtly drawn. Sigiriya is a palace and rock fortress which was built by king Kasyapa. World famous frescoes of women are found on the way to the summit with responses to the paintings in verse form (called Sigiri graffiti) inscribed on the rock by those who passed by. Kasyapa lost the kingdom and his life when he was killed in battle by his brother. In “From Sigiriya: The Unwritten Poem”, Assella provides an original approach to the frescoes. Rather than praise the “serene mysterious beauty”, one of the maidens in the frescoes wishes her lord had been present “to paint the ravaged one” when the castle was overrun and the women raped, or forced to commit suicide together. The collection includes poems on sex workers (“Galle Face Green”), unfulfilled dreams (“Letting Go”), being cheated by a lover (“You Were My First Love”) and racism (“Conveniently Brown”). Occasional humdrum poems such as “Long Walks on Rainy Days” do not diminish the overall impact of the collection.

Vivimarie Vanderpoorten’s translation of Upekala Athulorala’s Irthu aga Shesha path is decidedly the best translation of the year. Already the winner of the Gratiaen Award for her poetry in English, this work exceeds her own poetry in several particulars and is surely deserving of an award as well. The major obstacle faced by any translator of poetry especially is how to convey the subtleties, nuances, and idiomatic use of one language in another. The translator also must guard against making it too much of a literal translation which would inhibit her own creativity. The task becomes even more complex when the original includes poems that are vastly different from each other. Vanderpoorten has passed all these tests with ease. “Tunnel” is a poem that can be read at different levels — a woman who unquestioningly accepts a broken man into her life, a man “begging for his life to be saved/and yet offering hope of life”, heals his wound and provides him with a platform to begin a new life only to be herself affected by his nullity and emptiness which eventually leads her to “open the tunnel door/ and set you free.” The poem could also be symbolic of a country rich in culture and material possessions providing asylum to a refugee only for the refugee to take whatever the country has to offer and not give anything in return. “Snaggle Tooth” shows the sad transition from courting, through the wedding to the life of a married couple. The man who was especially fond of her snaggle tooth during the first two stages, a tooth which in Sri Lankan parlance is considered bad luck, breaks the teeth of the woman in stage three. “Tusks” is a harrowing poem based on a news item in Sri Lanka where some men were arrested for shooting an elephant with conjoined tusks. In the poem the tusker is blind as well. The poem brilliantly establishes the background of an elephant deprived of its own habitat by human encroachment having to seek out human habitation during a drought and paying the ultimate price. Vanderpoorten brings out the duality that is the elephant’s existence in relation to humans: “The elephant slaves for man/even though it bears the lofty sacred relic of the temple/it dances and degrades itself for our pleasure./But is helpless in the end/in the face of the gun.” The satire becomes severe at the end with the reference to the originary myth of the Sinhalese being of the lion race and how lions ultimately devour elephants. The parallel use of the word blind in the first and final lines of the last stanza are particularly arresting: “Blinded are men with conjoined use of wealth and power” and “Be thankful, oh great Tusker that you were blind”.

There was a resurgence of the performing arts in 2022, perhaps as a response to the country opening up after Covid restrictions were relaxed. While re-creations and reinterpretations of Hollywood musicals dominated the stage, original theatre was attempted as well. “Once Upon a Family” by Siri Theatre was one of the more serious dramas that was staged in the year under review. Asserting that he was influenced by the British Television series “Peaky Blinders” and “The Godfather” films and was challenged by the technical issues in reproducing such stories on stage, playwright/director Aslam Marikar informed the compiler of this introduction that, “if I was to give it an academic term, I would call it realist theatre. For this reason, I did not have to spend much on special effects. I did have quite an elaborate set on stage”. The influence of The Godfather is patent in the figure of Sulaiman who tries to keep his family strong and together and women folk out of the fray despite challenges from within and without. The trials faced by rich Muslim businessmen in Sri Lanka are highlighted as their companies are targeted by ruling party politicians who attempt to grab these assets for a pittance in the wake of negative sentiment directed at the minority community. The extremist Leftist opposition party, the JVP, is not spared either as it attempts to destroy the family for “ideological” reasons that are hypocritical in the extreme.

The prevailing socio-political and economic background gave rise to other kinds of drama as well. The Aragalaya, as previously discussed, saw Sri Lankans take to the streets to protest at the status quo in a cluster of ways. Marlon Ariyasinghe, who was deeply involved in the movement and is also a theatre director and enthusiast, had this to say on drama in the year under review in a personal communication with me on the subject:

While the movement focused on ousting the ruling Rajapaksa family from power, the main protest site in Colombo, Galle Face Green, became a space for theatrical performances. During the Aragalaya, plays, poetry, folk drama, and ritualistic performances communicated narratives that the state had purposefully subsumed. Acting out – in the public sphere – those subsumed experiences thus fostered empathy for the experiences of marginalized groups in the island. Against this backdrop of fuel shortages, ongoing protests, and brutal crackdowns by the police and armed forces, conventional theatrical productions, especially English theatre, came to a standstill. However, several productions occurred, especially in the latter half of 2022.

Strangers in the Night

Strangers in the Night, directed by Tracy Holsinger, and produced by Mind Adventures Theatre Company and Semmugam Performing group, is a tri-lingual (English, Sinhala, and Tamil) performance collaborating with performers from Colombo, Jaffna, Bogowantalawa, and Kandy. The piece is based on a poem by Mike Masilamani, set in Colombo in 2005, during a climate of fear created by war, suicide bombs, checkpoints, disappearances and government atrocities against minority communities – which were all lived experiences of the cast. Through devising, actors came up with music, choreography and several scenes within 24 hours of continuous work and performed a 20-minute piece employing a thrust stage to blur the line between audience and performer, creating an intimate, intense atmosphere. The first performance was on 15 October 2022. The production was performed on 30 November in Jaffna and 1 December in Killinochchi, Sri Lanka.

Awa Kaawa Giya

An anthology on migration, Awa Kaawa Giya, is a three-part, mixed media, research-based collection of short performance pieces that stitch together narratives of different waves of migration in Sri Lanka. The play was directed by Piumi Wijesundara, produced by Maleen Jayasuriya and was devised and written with the Stages Theatre Ensemble. The performance employed the biomechanics style of acting. It was performed in December 2022.

Yauwane (Youth)

This bilingual production was performed in August 2022, when the country was reeling from the economic and political crisis with sustained island-wide protests. The play, produced by Ananda Drama and directed by Rithmaka Karunadhara and Ravindu Samadhitha Perera, delved into the youth’s response and angst to the issues brought about by the Covid-19 pandemic and the crisis. The play was well received and went on to tour other parts of the country.

Shyam Selvadurai’s Funny Boy is one of the most popular Sri Lankan novels in English and taught in academic courses worldwide so the publication in 2021 of a special issue of Creative Forum: A Journal of Literary & Critical Writings, which focussed on the novel, was greatly anticipated. Consequently, it was disappointing to discover when the journal was available to the public the next year, that the bulk of the essays by senior academics like Raj Rao, Rajiva Wijesinha and Sumathy Sivamohan were reprints — the first two appeared more than a quarter of a century ago. However, two young Sri Lankans have contributed to it and their contributions are listed below. This collection was not included in the bibliography and introduction for the year 2021 because the relevant information was not available when it was compiled.

A footnote to this bibliography that covers writing in English in an extraordinary year would undoubtedly be the deleterious effect that the forex crisis had on the publishing industry. The price of paper tripled at a certain point and with it the cost of printing. Not only did this deter writers from having their work published but those who did so had to be satisfied with an initial print-run of, say, three hundred copies when formerly the standard was about one thousand. The price of a novel or poetry collection that formerly cost, say, Rs 800 rose to about Rs 1500 with the predictable consequence — a drastic reduction in sales. Some journals that brought out two issues a year were reduced to one or ceased publication altogether because power cuts that lasted about 13 hours a day during the worst period did not encourage online publication either. What particularly affected the compilation of this bibliography was the non-availability of the Sri Lanka National Bibliography, which the current compiler and his two predecessors had used as a core text. This bibliography, which is supposed to document all published work in English, Sinhala, and Tamil in Sri Lanka was an invaluable resource. The last issue that is publicly available was brought out in 2020 as the entry below indicates. Any gaps in this bibliography and the reduced number of entries when compared to previous years could be attributed to these factors which crippled the publishing industry in multitudinous ways.

This introduction would be incomplete without reference to the demise of Kamal de Abrew who was the most senior among retired English dons in Sri Lanka. He belonged to the first batch of those who entered the University of Ceylon, Peradeniya, when it was founded in the early 1950s. After graduating with honours, he received his PhD from Cornell and served Peradeniya as a Senior Lecturer before joining first the Open University of Sri Lanka and then East/West University, Dhaka, Bangladesh, as a Professor in English. He was invited to be the first editor of the prestigious University of Ceylon Review after it was transferred from Colombo to Peradeniya. Despite specializing in Language and Linguistics, de Abrew was a very perceptive literary critic and his essays on Sri Lankan poetry remain influential. With his passing, the island has lost a much loved and respected academic.