‘Brotherless Night,’ an ambitious novel about Sri Lankan civil war, wins $150K prize by National Public Radio, Washington, DC, May 13, 2024 Audio at V.V. Ganeshananthan’s ‘Brotherless Night’ The writer V. V. Ganeshananthan has won this year’s Carol Shields Prize for Fiction, for her novel Brotherless Night. This is the second year of the prize, which… Read more »
Posts Categorized: Book Reviews
Review: ‘Chai Time at Cinnamon Gardens’
‘Trojan horse’ novel tackling colonisation and war wins Miles Franklin Award by Jason Steger, The Sydney Morning Post, July 25, 2023 Shankari Chandran has pulled a fast one. Her novel Chai Time at Cinnamon Gardens has the sort of title and cover that suggest readers are in for a gentle read about the funny old residents of… Read more »
Review: Displacement among Sri Lankan Tamil Migrants
by Giorgia Donà, International Migration Review, Vol. 57, Issue 3, September 2023, pages 869-1321 Chattoraj Diotima. 2022. Displacement among Sri Lankan Tamil Migrants: The Diasporic Search for Home in the Aftermath of War. Singapore: Springer Nature. 180 pp., Hardcover, 120 USD. SpringerLink Forced displacement has resulted in the loss of homes for millions of people across the… Read more »
Out of Sri Lanka: Tamil, Sinhala, & English Poetry from Sri Lanka & Its Diasporas
Edited by Vidyan Ravinthiran, Seni Seneviratne, and Shash Trevett, Bloodaxe Books, UK, June 22, 2023 Paperback £14.99 ISBN: 9781780376738 E-book £12.99 ISBN: 9781780376745 Poetry Book Society Special Commendation Sri Lanka has thrilled the foreign imagination as a land of infinite possibility. Portuguese, Dutch and British colonisers envisioned an island of gems and pearls, a stopping-point… Read more »
Gnanam: Life Lessons from Her Mother
‘Gnanam” by Selvi Sachithanandam, shortlisted for 2023 Gratiaen Prize Gnanam is a biography cum memoir and charts the stories of 5 generations of women belonging to one family in Jaffna and it was inspired by the love, empathy, and trust that they handed down. The spiritual thread that runs through the book is innocuous, but… Read more »
Prabhakaran and LTTE: A Chronological Bibliography
Compiled by Sachi Sri Kantha, May 23, 2024 Front Note This is a revised version of my previous compilation, in three parts. Part I appeared on Nov 16, 2009. Part 2 was posted on Nov 24, 2010, and Part 3 appeared on Nov 27, 2011. Cumulatively, there were 189 items in the three parts. After… Read more »
Axiom Business Book Award for ‘Prisoner 1056’
by Axiom Awards, Michigan, USA, May 2024 Other winners in ‘Memoir / Biography’: GOLD Happy At Any Cost: The Revolutionary Vision and Fatal Quest of Zappos CEO Tony Hsieh by Kristen Grind and Katherine Sayre (Simon & Schuster) SILVER (tie) Bully Market: My Story of Money and Misogyny at Goldman Sachs by Jamie Fiore Higgins… Read more »
Review: Human Rights for Pragmatists
Social Power in Modern Times by Jack Snyder, Princeton University Press, July 2022 ISBN:9780691231549 Reviewed by G. John Ikenberry in Foreign Affairs, New York, posted December 25, 2023 January/February 2023 In this masterful work, Snyder offers a bold explanation for why, how, and when societies make progress in expanding political rights and freedoms. Typically, the story… Read more »
Book Review: ‘Politics of Hate’
Religious Majoritarianism in South Asia by Knox Thames, Global Policy, Durham University, UK, May 18, 2023 Politics of Hate: Religious Majoritarianism in South Asia edited by Farahnaz Ispahani. HarperCollins India 2023. 336 pp., £17.99 paperback 9789356293557, $14.99 e-book 9789356290013 The history of the Indian subcontinent is as vast as the region’s size and population. Consequently, foreign… Read more »
Book Review: Prisoner #1056 – How I Survived War and Found Peace
by Roy Ratnavel, Viking/Penguin Random House, Canada, 2023, 260 pp, US$27.00 by Sachi Sri Kantha, October 28, 2023 This book of memoir by Roy Ratnavel (born 1969), a naturalized Canadian of Sri Lankan Tamil descent, has achieved bestseller status in Canada this year. The memoir has 12 chapters altogether, among which the first three (in… Read more »
History of Tamils in Sri Lanka
by Laxshen in Reddit’s Eelam thread, late August, 2023 The Kingdom of Jaffna by S. Pathmanathan, Colombo, 1978 on Noolaham Primary sources for History of the Sri Lankan Tamils by Dr. Murugar Gunasingham, Sydney, 2005 on Noolaham Sri Lanka: The National Question and the Tamil Liberation Struggle by Satchi Ponnambalam, UK, 1983 on Noolaham The… Read more »
The Gospel According to the Sri Lankan (Sinhalese) Army
2022 version by Sachi Sri Kantha, June 21, 2023 This is my review of a book with a very long title -34 words! It is, ‘Prabhakaran’s Ruthless Terrorism in the guise of Liberation – Are the Sri Lankan Security Forces guilty of Genocide? – How the LTTE violated Human Rights by intentionally committing genocide –… Read more »
‘Kilinochchi’: A Story of Trauma and Resilience
by Groundviews, Colombo, June 4, 2023 In Himali McInnes’ story, Kilinochchi, which is short listed to win the Commonwealth Short Story Prize for 2023, the protagonist is Nisha, a Tamil tea plucker with a turbulent past who moves to New Zealand with her white husband. Her only son AJ, whose father is Sinhalese, goes back… Read more »
‘Politics of Hate’ Review
Two thoughtful contributions by Sri Lankan academics Neil DeVotta and Gehan Gunatilleke show how majoritarianism’s relentless othering is less about the majority’s imagined ideal minority-free state, and more about the satisfaction derived from blaming, punishing and depriving the “others” — the Sinhala Buddhist majority’s first target was the Indian Tamils. by Nirupama Subramaniam, Indian Express,… Read more »
‘Prisoner #1056’ by Roy Ratnavel
From the publisher, Penguin Random House, April 18, 2023 ABOUT PRISONER #1056 An incredible immigrant story from a prominent Canadian Tamil who fled torture and imprisonment, arrived in Canada with $50 in his pocket, then rose from the mailroom to the executive suite of the country’s largest independent asset management company. Roy Ratnavel’s astonishing journey began… Read more »
Interview with Shankari Chandran
“‘Song of the Sun God’ is a novel that interrogates the injustices faced by the Tamil people” by Krishna Selvaseelan, Tamil Guardian, London, March 20, 2023 I will begin this piece with a confession. In times of emotional distress and crisis, I often watch YouTube clips of the 1991 film ‘Thalapathi’, a film which is… Read more »
Author A. Muttulingam
by Tamil Wiki, accessed March 7, 2023 A. Muttulingam (January 19, 1937) is one of the pre-eminent writers in modern Tamil literature. His contributions, which include short stories, essays, interviews and novels, are characterized by humour, aesthetic appeal and perfection in form. Born in Sri Lanka, he is a storyteller who travelled the world on… Read more »
The Untold Story of Ancient Tamils in Sri Lanka
by by Prof. Bertram Bastiampillai, Sri Lanka Guardian, March 31, 2008 “And history may need to rewritten in the light of new evidence and argument. Much about Tamils needs to be unraveled and examined according to the author who is convinced and tries to convince that Tamils had been in the island from early years… Read more »
Indian Ocean Strategic Ocean Newsletter 2022
by Indian Ocean Strategic Studies, New York, January – August 2022 Indian Ocean Strategic Studies newsletter January 2022 Indian Ocean Strategic Studies newsletter March April 2022 Indian Ocean Strategic Studies newsletter May June 2022 Indian Ocean Strategic Studies newsletter July August 2022 Mission of the IOSS The Indian Ocean is at the heart of international… Read more »
Review of Sharanya Manivannan’s ‘Incantations Over Water’
She sings of love Sharanya Manivannan’s graphic novel propounds and embodies the theme of multiplicity by Sneha Krishnan, The Hindu, Chennai, February 10, 2022 Sharanya Manivannan’s graphic novel, Incantations Over Water, is set near Kallady lagoon in Mattakalappu, Ilankai (Batticaloa, Sri Lanka). But the story stretches beyond the common concepts of place and time. In its structure… Read more »