Biography

Romesh Gunesekera was born in Sri Lanka in 1954, moving to London in 1972. He grew up speaking both English and Sinhala. Gunesekera won the Liverpool College Poetry Prize in 1972, the Rathborne Prize in Philosophy in 1976, and the first prize in the Peterloo Open Poetry Competition in 1988. Gunesekera's first book Monkfish Moon was a New York Times Notable Book of the Year while his first Novel Reef was shortlisted for the 1994 Booker Prize. Gunesekera says that he is currently planning on writing another novel (Erney ).

Gunesekera's first book, Monkfish Moon, is a collection of stories that tell about the political  upheaval in Sri Lanka. The first story, "A House in the Country," follows Ray, who returns to Sri Lanka from England, and Siri, Ray's houseboy. Ray's returns to Sri Lanka at a very confusing period in Sri Lanka's history. "In 'Batik,' a husband and wife find themselves struggling to keep their marriage intact. Because Nalini is Sinhalese and her husband, Tiru, is Tamil, they have relocated to London where Nalini finds her lover becoming increasingly distant as the violence at home continues to escalate. In the title story, Peter, a wealthy Sri Lankan businessman, begins to show exactly how far off course his life has moved during an awkward dinner party with family and friends" (Putnam Berkley Group Blurb). Other stories include "Captives," "Batik," "Ullswater," "Storm Petrel," "Ranvali," "Carapace," "Straw Hurts," and "Monkfish Moon" .

Reef is Gunesekera's first novel. It describes the childhood and adolescence of Triton, a restaurateur from Sri Lanka. Triton, after burning down a roof in his schoolyard, runs away and finds himself a servant to Mr. Salgado, a wealthy marine biologist. Under the service of Mr. Salgado, Triton grows up, becomes an expert chef, and witnesses the destruction of his country. Triton and Mr. Salgado flee to England, but ultimately, Mr. Salgado returns to Sri Lanka. Triton then must learn to live on his own.

Although Guneskera's writings may seem to require that the reader should have some background knowledge of the history, culture, and politics of Sri Lanka, Gunesekera believes that the reader can appreciate his stories with or without such knowledge. Gunesekera had this to say about his intended audience: "I think at least the kind of writing that I'm interested in doesn't really demarcate the world in terms of this kind of reader or that kind of reader. The biggest sort of category shift you have, I think, is between people who read and people who don't read, you know, for lots of reasons." "Now, at the same time I do know that people who are readers also have a background and also have a physical reality, and they have a set of experiences and they bring all of those to a book when they come and therefore people who, for example, know nothing about the location, the setting of a story or a book, say, Sri Lanka. What they get out of it is going to be very different. What they get out of it is perhaps a discovery of something unfamiliar, but there is a sense of discovery they get, but if they already know the place they get something else. They also get a sense of discovery, but it's a sense of discovery of the familiar, perhaps" (from an interview by Erney).

Gunesekera's recent novels are The Sandglass (1998) and Heaven's Edge (2002).

Works Cited

Erney, Hans-Georg. "Romesh Gunesekera."1997. Online. Internet. Available: http://www.phil.uni-erlangen.de/~p2engphi/eccel/authors/gune.html

Erney, Hans-Georg. "EESE 10/1997 'Culture is not contained, it's all over the place.Õ An Interview with Romesh Gunesekera." October 1997. Online. Internet. Available: http://www.ph-erfurt.de/~neumann/eese/artic97/erney/10_97.html

Gunesekera, Romesh. Monkfish Moon. Riverhead Books,1996.

---. Reef. Riverhead Books, 1996.

---. The Sandglass. New Press, 1998.

The Putnam Berkley Group. "A NEW YORK TIMES Notable Book of the Year: Monkfish Moon by Romesh Gunesekera." 10/21/97. Online. Internet. Available: http://www.univstudios.com/putnam/books/monkfish_moon/book.html

(wps@rainbow.net.au). "REEF. Romesh Gunesekera. 1994. Granta Books. London." Online. Internet. Available: http://www.rainbow.net.au/~wps/reef.html

Selected Bibliography

"Wild Duck". 1994. In: Andrew Motion and Candice Rodd (eds.). New Writing 3. London: Minerva. 1994.

"The Lover". 1996. In: Christopher Hope and Peter Porter (eds.). New Writing 5. London: Vintage. 1996.

Related Sites

• The Politics of Sri Lanka and Reef
• Reef as a Bildungsroman
• Brief introduction to Gunesekera with related sites
• Hans-Georg Erney conducts a personal interview with Romesh Gunesekera.
• About Sri Lanka: "Sri Lanka Paradise on Earth"

Author: Santanu Biswas, Fall 1997 (sbisw01@emory.edu )

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