Category: Books and Literature
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We need to talk about ‘Free Speech’
We have been hearing a lot about ‘free speech’ recently – and not in the way that we in Sri Lanka are typically used to; not as a call to defend journalists and activists against persecution. For example: the highly divisive Milo Yiannopoulos’ speaking appointment at the University of Berkeley was cancelled in January after…
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Ethical Divides: ‘This Divided Island’ and ‘The Seasons of Trouble’
This post has been a long time coming. It has taken many shapes and been many versions of itself. Now I am back home in Sri Lanka, where all the nuances of our lives in this place and belonging to this place somehow pull and tug simultaneously, I think it’s time to say it…
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DBC Pierre
DBC Pierre is perhaps best known as the writer of Vernon God Little – an astute and frighteningly accurate look at what makes America the country that it is – and besides, what makes it so endlessly fascinating, both in love and hate, to us – the rest of the world. Following the critical acclaim…
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A Burning: 31 Years Later
31 years ago, today, the Jaffna Public Library, situated in Jaffna, Sri Lanka, was burnt to the ground. It was collateral damage of a long and bitter ethnic conflict which ultimately claimed many other things of value, including several thousands of human lives, property, homes, landmarks of culture and religion, of civilisation. Eye-witnesses of the incident…
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Maurice Sendak and the Power of a Good Story
When I heard yesterday that Maurice Sendak, author of what has lately become a legend of sorts in the genre of children’s literature, Where the Wild Things Are, had passed away at the age of 83, I felt very sad. I tried to explain it to my friend, who had been the bearer of the…
Subha M Wijesiriwardena 