Books

Mansions of the Moon

In this sweeping, at once epic and intimate, Shyam Selvadurai introduces us to Yasodhara, a woman of great spirit and intelligence, married to her cousin Siddhartha Gautama, an unusually bright and politically astute young man, who will later become “the enlightened one,” or the Buddha. Mansions of the Moon traces the couple’s early love and life together, and then the anguished turmoil that descends upon them both as Siddhartha’s spiritual calling takes over and the marriage partnership slowly, inexorably crumbles…

Many Roads Through Paradise

Shyam Selvadurai pieces together the best of Sri Lankan poetry and fiction in this anthology. From the Sinhala and Tamil writers of the 1950s to diasporic writers of today, from stories of love and longing to those of brutality and death, this masterfully constructed anthology will give you a rich sense Sri Lanka’s history, its people and the stories they have to tell.

The Hungry Ghosts

In Sri Lankan myth, a person who dies may be reborn a “hungry ghost” — a ghost with a large stomach that can never be filled through its tiny mouth — if he has desired too much during his life. It is the duty of the living to free the dead who are doomed to this fate by transferring karma from their own good deeds…

Swimming in the Monsoon Sea

The setting is Sri Lanka, 1980, and it is the season of monsoons. Fourteen-year-old Amrith is caught up in the life of the cheerful, well-to-do household in which he is being raised by his vibrant Auntie Bundle and kindly Uncle Lucky. He tries not to think of his life “before,” when his doting mother was still alive…

Story-Wallah!

Story-Wallah gathers the finest South Asian voices in fiction for the first time in a single volume. In this book, some of the world’s best fiction writers — Salman Rushdie, Anita Desai, Michael Ondaatjee, Monica Ali etc — hawk their wares from different parts of the South Asian diaspora creating a virtual map of the world with their tales…

Cinnamon Gardens

Set in 1920s Sri Lanka, during the turbulent closing days of colonial rule, Cinnamon Gardens takes reader behind the fragrant gardens and polished surfaces of the elite who reside in a wealthy suburb of Cinnamon Gardens in Colombo to reveal a world of splintered families, conflicted passions, and lives destroyed by class hatred…

Funny Boy

Although not autobiographical, Funny Boy draws on Selvadurai’s experience of being gay in Sri Lanka and growing up during the escalating violence between the Tamils and Sinhalese that culminated in the 1983 communal riots. The novel tells the story of Arjie Chelvaratnam who, at the age of 7, prefers dressing up in a sari and playing bride-bride with his girl cousin to cricket…