A passenger on a road journey is in the hands of a driver; a reader embarking on a book is in the hands of a narrator.
From Romesh Gunesekera
I was thinking of writers living in East Europe before the Berlin Wall came down. They wrote fantastic stuff but were dealing with a situation that was almost impossible to deal with, but they found a way.
Whether we live in Sri Lanka or Malaysia or India, the U.K. or the U.S., we face similar issues of understanding, remembering the past that has made us and seeing the future we want.
Sri Lanka is a part of my background: it's not where I live, but it's what I want to explore. And I find it works very well to explore through fiction.
Cricket fans all over the world probably have more in common with each other than with their fellow citizens.
I probably felt most out of place as a young kid growing up in Sri Lanka. My mental world was somewhere else, partly because of reading and daydreaming.
My writing has been shaped by the three countries - Sri Lanka, the Philippines and England - I have lived in.
The nationalist movement supported Sinhala by suppressing Tamil; there were competing nationalisms. It was a fundamental mistake to make parallel streams in education - or a calculated political gamble. Politicians were playing with it.
Writing is incredibly important to me as a way of handling the world, understanding how it works.
Most childhoods are full of anxiety, but that tends to get smoothed over, so you have a sense of nostalgia.
8 perspectives
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2 perspectives
1 perspectives