New literary experience as Gratiaen 2019 goes online
The Gratiaen Prize – one of the premier events of the Sri Lankan literary calendar –was experienced this year on a digital platform. We missed the snug shortlist evenings at the British Council library with the literary bonhomie and the crackling atmosphere, the buildup to the suspenseful final crescendo.
Another peculiarity of the 2019 Gratiaen is that the shortlisted writers – Andrew Fidel Fernando, Praveen Jayamanna, Upali Mahaliyana and Vihanga Perera are all male. This does not mean any want of imagination however, and together, they take us on new adventures with a clean kick of testosterone.
Talking of adventure, the list begins with Andrew Fidel Fernando’s Upon a Sleepless Isle- a travelogue. It has created waves already here and in India- an eight week journey across the island with lots of spice, colour and hilarity. What sets Andrew apart from a long tradition held up recently by people like John Gimlette is that he is ‘both local and tourist’. The insider’s glow in the countless experiences and anecdotes- somewhat reminiscent of Bill Bryson- makes the book authentic- and more recherché with the material.
Andrew, who is a cricket writer, confesses to being “a huge history nerd, a wildlife nut, a diligent home cook and an avid scuba diver”- all of which spill out of this utterly funny bus-cycle-and-trishaw saga which also projects- amidst the shambles- the portrait of a “country and a people caught between long historical traditions and global capitalism”.
Another adventure is The Double Doorway by Praveen Jayamanna- a student of Colombo International School. The story of Jack, his sister Mel and ‘the Scientist’, is set in that Americanized though not geographically specified realm that more and more teenagers seem to wander into. But Praveen’s feat was to galvanize the judges with his prodigious ‘dreamwork’. Says Praveen: “I wanted to write something that was different to the other books that I have read, while still conveying a deeper message.” The judges commended the novel for its “ambitious colourful representation of a new fantastical world through the character of a young child, its imaginative plot build-up, and its attempt to present to young readers complex ideas through metaphor and imagery”.
Shortlisted for the second time running, Upali Mahaliyana in the novel Tom-tom Boy moves away from the upwardly mobile urban middle classes- his work surface in the 2018 shortlisted Youthful Escapades. Tom-tom Boy is the story of two boys who take robes when young due to poverty and follow separate paths later in life, before coming together again. Mahaliyana’s warp and weft is familiar from the earlier work: the wonderful evocation of youth with its crises; the narrative which begins from the ‘beginning of the end’; pulling out certain skeletons in our collective closet.
For the judges the book was selected for its “richly imagined story and clarity of language, its formal restraint and subtle power, the novel’s sensitive engagement with caste and class in contemporary Sri Lankan culture, its exploration of complex themes of identity, sexuality and religion, and its attempt to locate that which is most true and most human”.
Vihanga Perera has been something of a literary enfant terrible with his bold poetry and prose. For Vihanga, there’s nothing like the full blooded here and the now. His writing is topical and set deeply in context- while being biographical (sometimes it is said to the extent of being esoteric) and drawing in real life people. His collection of poetry with three sections is titled Sentimental Pieces / The Private Funeral / Classical War Poems. The first, as the title signals, comprises some 40 poems of personal, introspective nature- while the other two sections are narrative-driven longer pieces. Vihanga won the 2014 Gratiaen and was shortlisted in 2006 and 2008.
The winner will be announced at an online event on July 4 at 6.30 p.m.- on FB- @dailymirroronline, @Gratiaentrust and @JohnKeellsFoundation.