'The Sweet and Simple Kind' brings honour to writer

Yasmine Gooneratne shortlisted for the 2008 International IMPAC Dublin Literary Award

"Gosh! It was superb news; I'm still getting over it!" Yasmine Gooneratne exclaims, on being the first Sri Lankan to be shortlisted for the 2008 International IMPAC Dublin Literary Award.

The Award is presented annually with the objective of promoting excellence in world literature. It is open to novels written in any language and by authors of any nationality. It is also worth €100,000, making it the world's most valuable literary prize for a single work of fiction published in English.

Yasmin Gooneratne's latest publication, 'The Sweet and Simple Kind', was shortlisted for this award alongside seven others, from a total of 137 novels nominated this year. 'The Sweet and Simple Kind', a novel which "creates a richly imagined world of love, political chicanery and family turmoil in the newly independent Sri Lanka" was nominated for this award by the Colombo Public Library.

Emeritus Professor at Macquarie University, New South Wales, Yasmine Gooneratne was born in Colombo and educated in Sri Lanka, the United Kingdom and Australia. Acclaimed as a critic and as an editor she has earned international repute as a pioneer in the field of Commonwealth Literature written in English. She has won many awards and prizes and was shortlisted for the Commonwealth Fiction Prize in 1991 for ‘A Change of Skies’. She currently divides her time between Australia and Sri Lanka.

"I have a pretty fair idea of the competition the book must have had to face, being on that list with those of veterans like Margaret Atwood," she says, "and I am proud that it managed to surmount those obstacles." Yasmine also expressed her pleasure on behalf of the publisher who she says is "very happy" as this is "the first time this has happened". Yasmine is currently working on a new idea she has had, which she believes will push the IMPAC award to a "backseat" in her mind soon, but finds herself presently distracted by her "shiny and new granddaughter".