New Books

It was never a bed of roses

"My literary career was not a bed of roses. Tears spread all over my paths," confesses Buddhadasa Hewage presenting The Shadows of Life the translation of a collection of short stories originally written by him in Sinhala.

He remembers the day when as 'a poor teacher', he found it difficult to get 200 copies of his original book printed. That was the mid '80s. When the book was approved as a school library book, he managed to get another thousand printed.

Hewage has written three novels - Yathrawaka Minissu (also done in English under the title 'The Victims'), Thunpath Ren, Sulang Horawa - and has three collections of short stories to his credit. He has translated selected Chinese short stories and published Bebaddage Sihinaya and also done a teledrama script, 'Sisira Nimnaya'.

The life of the downtrodden often forms the base for Hewage's stories. "Hewage shows much skill in the absorption of material from the lives of the downtrodden, presumably the life in the average third world scene. His characters are constantly in search of a certain liberation, which lurks in the socio-economic matrix of that social milieu pseudo propagandist genre of writers who are in vogue in this country. He transcends from the barriers of being the slogan writer peeping in to the wide panorama of experiences around him", says Professor Sunanda Mahendra.

More Plus * Bookshelf

Return to the Plus Contents