Download or read book Noontide Toll written by Romesh Gunesekera and published by New Press, The. This book was released on 2010-11-09 with total page 127 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In postwar Sri Lanka, a hired driver observes his passengers—tourists, soldiers, businessmen, and others—in these linked stories by a “master storyteller” (The New York Times). Vasantha retired early, bought himself a van, and now works as a driver for hire. As he drives through Sri Lanka, carrying aid workers, entrepreneurs, and visiting families; meeting lonely soldiers and eager hoteliers, he engages them with self-deprecating wit and folksy wisdom—while revealing to us their uncertain lives with piercing insight. On his journey from the army camps in northern Jaffna to the moonlit ramparts of Galle, in the south, Vasantha slowly discovers the depth of his country’s troubles—as well as his own—while catching a glimmer of the promise the future might hold. From the Booker Prize–shortlisted author of Reef comes a collection of “gracefully crafted road stories” that draws a potent portrait of postwar Sri Lanka and the ghosts of civil war (TheGuardian). Praise for Romesh Gunesekera “Monkfish Moon strikes the reader like a hammer blow. . . . Gunesekera’s subtly erotic prose animates Sri Lanka’s natural luxuriance, veined with menace.” —Voice Literary Supplement

Download or read book The Sandglass written by Romesh Gunesekera and published by Penguin Books India. This book was released on 1999 with total page 292 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: From The Author Of Reef, Shortlisted For The Booker Prize, Comes A Stunning New Novel And A Masterpiece Of Storytelling. Profoundly Moving And Often Sharply Funny, The Sandglass Unravels The Many Stories Of Transformation, Disappearance And Loss That Haunt The Ducal Family From The Moment Pearl S Husband Purchases His Dream-House-Arcadia-Which Lies At The Centre Of Both The Vatunas Estate And A Bitter Feud. It Follows Pearl S Courageous Flight From Her Homeland And Traces The Consequences Of Her Children S Efforts To Find Their Own Dreamlands In England, America And Modern-Day Sri Lanka. The Sandglass Is An Intricate Novel Of Love And Longing That Transforms The World We Know Into One We Wish To Know More About; A World In Which Hope Has To Survive The Darkest Truths.

Download or read book Monkfish Moon written by Romesh Gunesekera and published by . This book was released on 1996 with total page 148 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In these stories, the acclaimed author of the Reef describes his homeland of Sri Lanka--a kind of paradise in which a sudden moment of silence in a city is cause for fear, where civil war disrupts a marriage thousands of miles away, and where the building up of home, relationships, and lives is more often than not swiftly and violently brought down. A New York Times Notable Book of the Year.

Download or read book Telling Stories written by and published by BRILL. This book was released on 2021-11-15 with total page 493 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The present volume is a highly comprehensive assessment of the postcolonial short story since the thirty-six contributions cover most geographical areas concerned. Another important feature is that it deals not only with exclusive practitioners of the genre (Mansfield, Munro), but also with well-known novelists (Achebe, Armah, Atwood, Carey, Rushdie), so that stimulating comparisons are suggested between shorter and longer works by the same authors. In addition, the volume is of interest for the study of aspects of orality (dialect, dance rhythms, circularity and trickster figure for instance) and of the more or less conflictual relationships between the individual (character or implied author) and the community. Furthermore, the marginalized status of women emerges as another major theme, both as regards the past for white women settlers, or the present for urbanized characters, primarily in Africa and India. The reader will also have the rare pleasure of discovering Janice Kulik Keefer's “Fox,” her version of what she calls in her commentary “displaced autobiography’” or “creative non-fiction.” Lastly, an extensive bibliography on the postcolonial short story opens up further possibilities for research.

Download or read book The Match written by Romesh Gunesekera and published by New Press, The. This book was released on 2014-09-16 with total page 321 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: As a teenager from Sri Lanka, Sunny is living the typical life of an expatriate in 1970s Manila—a privileged, carefree existence—until one day when the secret behind his mother's tragic death years earlier is accidentally revealed to him, turning Sunny's world upside down. His life takes a series of unexpected turns—first in England, where he falls in love with the luminous Clara, and later in Sri Lanka, where he returns during a brief lull in the country's brutal ethnic war. Reminiscent of V.S. Naipaul in his nuanced treatment of the melancholy of exile, Gunesekera takes the reader on an utterly absorbing journey across the late twentieth-century postcolonial world. Spanning three continents and thirty years, The Match is a "beautiful and atmospheric" (Irish Times) exploration of the nature of loss and displacement, the search for identity and love, and the possibility, in the end, of redemption and renewal.

Download or read book The Prisoner of Paradise written by Romesh Gunesekera and published by A&C Black. This book was released on 2012-02-02 with total page 402 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Lucy Gladwell arrives in Mauritius from England to live with her aunt and uncle at their grand plantation house. Under the surface of this beautiful island paradise, poised between India and Africa, there is unease, and Lucy cannot help but feel discomfited by the restrictions she sees around her, and by the strangely attractive Don Lambodar, a young translator from Ceylon. It is 1825: the age of slavery is coming to its messy end, and word is lapping against the shores of the island of a charismatic new Indian leader who will shine the light of liberty. For Lucy, for Don, for everyone on the island, a devastating storm is coming...

Download or read book The Mind Parasites written by Colin Wilson and published by Monkfish Book Publishing. This book was released on 2013-05-15 with total page 181 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Wilson has blended H.P. Lovecraft's dark vision with his own revolutionary philosophy and unique narrative powers to produce a stunning, high-tension story of vaulting imagination. A professor makes a horrifying discovery while excavating a sinister archaeological site. For over 200 years, mind parasites have been lurking in the deepest layers of human consciousness, feeding on human life force and steadily gaining a foothold on the planet. Now they threaten humanity's extinction. They can be fought with one weapon only: the mind, pushed to--and beyond--its limits. Pushed so far that humans can read each other's thoughts, that the moon can be shifted from its orbit by thought alone. Pushed so that man can at last join battle with the loathsome parasites on equal terms.

Download or read book Heaven s Edge written by Romesh Gunesekera and published by A&C Black. This book was released on 2012-02-07 with total page 251 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Marc, in search of a dream, leaves London and sets out for the island where his grandfather was born and where his father's plane was shot down in flames. It is an island once said to be near the edge of heaven, but now ravaged and despoiled by war. There by a glittering lake he sees the subversive Uva, an eco-warrior releasing emerald doves. Finding her launches him into a world of passion and difficult choices. But their affair is cut short when she disappears. Desperate to find her, Marc embarks on a final terrifying journey that will test all his beliefs as he confronts violence in a quest for love.

Download or read book Reef written by Romesh Gunesekera and published by National Geographic Books. This book was released on 1996-02-01 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The "incandescent" (New York Times Book Review) coming-of-age-story and debut novel by the acclaimed Booker Prize finalist Romesh Gunesekera Triton loved living in Mister Salgado's house. It was the biggest house he had ever seen--filled with floors to sweep and silver to polish and meals to cook and adults to impress and a brilliant master whose voice was poetry. And people from all over the world came to the house-- to sell their wares, to talk, to live, for this was where life took place. Even the sun would rise from the garage and sleep behind the del tree at night. And in the house, life was good. But beyond Mister Salgado's house and their Sri Lankan village there was a world. And all around them, it was falling apart...

Download or read book Suncatcher written by Romesh Gunesekera and published by The New Press. This book was released on 2020-03-17 with total page 289 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The internationally celebrated (and Booker Prize–shortlisted) author returns with a dazzling coming-of-age story set in post-independence Sri Lanka "A master storyteller." —The New York Times Ceylon is on the brink of change. But young Kairo is at loose ends. School is closed, the government is in disarray, the press is under threat, and the religious right are flexing their muscles. Kairo's hardworking mother blows off steam at her cha-cha-cha classes; his Trotskyist father grumbles over the state of the nation between his secret bets on horse races in faraway England. All Kairo wants to do is hide in his room and flick through secondhand westerns and superhero comics, or escape on his bicycle and daydream. Then he meets the magnetic teenage Jay, and his whole world is turned inside out. A budding naturalist and a born rebel, Jay keeps fish and traps birds for an aviary he is building in the garden of his grand home. As Jay guides Kairo from the realm of make-believe into one of hunting guns and fast cars and introduces him to a girl— Niromi—Kairo begins to understand the price of privilege and embarks on a journey of devastating consequence. Taut and luminous, graceful and wild, Suncatcher is a poignant coming-of-age novel about difficult friendships and sudden awakenings set among the tumult of 1960s Sri Lanka, that confirms Gunesekera's status as one of today's most lyrical writers.

Download or read book The Sandglass written by Romesh Gunesekera and published by New Press, The. This book was released on 2014-09-16 with total page 289 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Already hailed as "intricate and compelling" by the Times Literary Supplement, The Sandglass is a striking novel by Sri Lankan author Romesh Gunesekera, a 1994 Booker Prize finalist for his first novel, Reef. Set in London where the Sri Lankan narrator lives, The Sandglass tells the story of two feuding families whose lives are interlinked by the changing fortunes of postcolonial Sri Lanka. In a beautifully constructed work that moves back and forth between two physical and temporal poles, Gunesekera brings to life Prins Ducal and his search for answers about his family's past in Sri Lanka, including his father's rise to wealth, rivalry with the Vatunas family, and a suspect death—a mystery that further unfolds upon Prins's arrival in London for his mother's funeral. Weaving together themes of memory, exile, and postcolonial upheaval, Gunesekera has written a book Marie Claire calls "utterly engaging. . . . Romantic, mysterious, and laced with a sense of yearning. . . . A heady mix of 1990s London and postwar Sri Lanka."

Download or read book The Rough Guide to Sri Lanka written by Rough Guides and published by Penguin. This book was released on 2015-11-03 with total page 646 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Rough Guide to Sri Lanka is the most comprehensive and user-friendly guide to exploring this fascinating island country. Each chapter includes thoroughly researched travel information, hotel and restaurant listings, and thoughtful background on the environment, politics, culture, music and history, and a practical language guide ensures you can interact with locals. The full-color design combines glorious images to whet your appetite with a practical layout and dozens of accessible and accurate maps to guide you from the urban centers to the jungle, beaches and mountains. Make the most of your time with The Rough Guide to Sri Lanka.

Download or read book Extravagant Strangers written by Caryl Phillips and published by Vintage. This book was released on 2010-05-05 with total page 337 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Shakespeare called Othello "an extravagant and wheeling strangers/Of here and every where." In this exciting anthology, Caryl Phillips has collected writings by thirty-nine extravagant strangers: British writers who were born outside of Britain and see it with clear and critical eyes. These eloquent and incisive voices prove that English literature, far from being pure or homogenous, has in fact been shaped and influenced by outsiders for over two hundred years. Here are slave writers, such as Ignatius Sancho, an eighteenth-century African who became a friend to Samuel Jonson and Laurence Sterne; writers born in the colonies, such as Thackeray, Kipling, and Orwell; "subject writers," such as C.L.R. James and V.S. Naipaul, foreign émigrés, such as Joseph Conrad and Kazuo Ishiguro; and postcolonial observers of the British scene, such as Salman Rushdie, Ben Okri, and Anita Desai. With this eloquent and often inspiring collection, Phillips proves, if proof be needed, that the greatest literature is often born out of irreconcilable tensions between a writer and his or her society.

Download or read book Sri Lanka Voices from a War Zone written by Nirupama Subramanian and published by Penguin Books India. This book was released on 2005 with total page 252 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: &Lsquo;If We Don&Rsquo;T Tell Our Stories, Who Will?&Rsquo; They Were Ordinary People&Mdash;Farmers, Fisherfolk, Businessmen, Pensioners, Housewives And School Children&Mdash;Until A Relentless War Machine Invaded Their Lives. These Are Their Stories&Mdash;Stories Of Intense Suffering, But Also Of Great Courage, Resilience And Dignity. Nirupama Subramanian, A Journalist Who Spent Seven Years Reporting The Vicious Face-Off Between Sri Lanka&Rsquo;S Government And The Separatist Ltte, Criss-Crossed The Towns And Villages Of A Beautiful But Ravaged Island To Uncover These &Lsquo;Little Histories&Rsquo; As She Calls Them&Mdash;Of Children Forcibly Recruited Into Tiger Training Camps; Of Parents Waiting For Mass Graves To Reveal Their Bleak Secrets; Of People Fleeing Their Homes In War Zones Only To Become Prisoners In Refugee Camps; Of The Families Of The Missing Who Still Wait And Hope; Of Women In The Maid-Trade Bonded In Virtual Slavery In Foreign Lands. Woven Into These Narratives Are The Larger Stories&Mdash;Of A President, Chandrika Kumaratunga, Elected With A Massive Mandate For Peace But Trapped In A War So Intense That She Was Unable To Make Good Her Promise; And Of Tiger Supremo Vellupillai Prabhakaran, Trapped Too, But In A Cage Fashioned Out Of His Own Egoism And Ruthlessness&Mdash;One He Never Dare Leave. As Sri Lanka Searches For An Elusive Peace, Read This Book To Understand The Price That Sri Lankans Have Paid For A War That Has Raged For Over Twenty Years. &Nbsp;

Download or read book Routledge Handbook of the South Asian Diaspora written by Joya Chatterji and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2014-01-03 with total page 430 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: South Asia’s diaspora is among the world’s largest and most widespread, and it is growing exponentially. It is estimated that over 25 million persons of Indian descent live abroad; and many more millions have roots in other countries of the subcontinent, in Pakistan, Bangladesh and Sri Lanka. There are 3 million South Asians in the UK and approximately the same number resides in North America. South Asians are an extremely significant presence in Southeast Asia and Africa, and increasingly visible in the Middle East. This inter-disciplinary handbook on the South Asian diaspora brings together contributions by leading scholars and rising stars on different aspects of its history, anthropology and geography, as well as its contemporary political and socio-cultural implications. The Handbook is split into five main sections, with chapters looking at mobile South Asians in the early modern world before moving on to discuss diaspora in relation to empire, nation, nation state and the neighbourhood, and globalisation and culture. Contributors highlight how South Asian diaspora has influenced politics, business, labour, marriage, family and culture. This much needed and pioneering venture provides an invaluable reference work for students, scholars and policy makers interested in South Asian Studies.

Download or read book Heaven s Edge written by Romesh Gunesekera and published by Grove/Atlantic, Inc.. This book was released on 2007-12-01 with total page 244 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: “Gunesekera evokes his birthplace, Sri Lanka, as he presents a love story made more brilliant and more sweet by the destruction all around.” —Entertainment Weekly Following the Booker nominated Reef and the acclaimed book The Sandglass, Romesh Gunesekera’s third novel, Heaven’s Edge, was hailed by the New York Times Book Review as “his most accomplished yet . . . Wistful, melancholy and mysterious . . . a complex novel that entwines the individual’s quest for wholeness with a country’s longing for lost—and better—times.” In search of a dream, Marc leaves London for the land of his patrimony and family secrets—an island once said to be near the edge of heaven but now despoiled by war. After his affair with a subversive “eco-warrior” is cut short when she disappears, Marc must search for her among the mystical land’s underground dens of iniquity and ghostly colonial mansions. In the midst of gun battles and foot races, can Marc achieve a happiness he would defend with his life? Heaven’s Edge is “an intriguing hybrid, one part post-colonial adventure story, two parts coming-of-age tale . . . It feels positively epic given how much riffing Gunesekera does on the island’s landscape, its groves of mango and jacaranda trees, the lushness of its lantana blossoms” (John Freeman, San Francisco Chronicle). “The central themes [of Heaven’s Edge]—war and peace, violence and nonviolence— are timeless and timely . . . [Gunesekera’s] feeling for the intense natural beauty of his native land is palpable in every phrase of his lyrical and inventive prose style, and runs like a silver thread through the dark territory he explores.” —Los Angeles Times

Download or read book Paradise Discourse Imperialism and Globalization written by Sharae Deckard and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2009-12-04 with total page 263 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In this volume, Deckard analyzes authors such as Malcolm Lowry, Leonard Woolf, Juan Rulfo, Wilson Harris, Abdulrazak Gurnah, and Romesh Gunesekera to make a materialist study of the relation between paradise myths and the ideologies and economies of colonialism and neo-imperialism in literature from Mexico, Zanzibar and Sri Lanka.