BOOK ALERT!
The HSBC Galle Literary Festival kicks off on 18 January. Tickets are on sale in Galle: Mama's Rooftop Cafe 76 Leyn Baan Street in Galle Fort (Weekdays 10am-5pm, Sat 10am-3pm) and online at www.galleliteraryfestival.com FEATURED HERE ARE SOME BOOKS BY THE
PIGEON ENGLISH
By Stephen Kelman
Newly arrived from Ghana with his mother and older sister, eleven-year-old Harrison Opoku lives on the ninth floor of a block of flats on an inner-city housing estate. With equal fascination for the local gang – the Dell Farm Crew – and the pigeon who visits his balcony, Harri absorbs the many strange elements of his new life in England: watching, listening, and learning the tricks of inner-city survival. But when a boy is knifed to death on the high street and a police appeal for witnesses draws only silence, Harri decides to start a murder investigation of his own.
Additional Info:
Kelman’s manuscript sparked a bidding war between 12 UK publishers and was finally secured by Bloomsbury in January 2010 for what his agents described as a “high six-figure sum”. AVAILABLE AT BAREFOOT AND CHAPTERS, AS WELL AS VIJITHA YAPA (ONLINE AND IN STORES) PRICE: RS. 970.00
IN TIMES OF SIEGE
By Githa Hariharan
In Times of Siege covers the span of two months (late August - October, 2000) in the life of Shiv Murthy, a fifty-two year old professor of history at Kasturba Gandhi Central University. Two events unsettle Murthy’s settled life. He is the “local guardian” for Meena, a student at one of the other Delhi universities whose mother had asked him to watch out for her while she was in Delhi. Equally disruptive is the furour that explodes around some material he prepared for one of his B.A. history courses undermining the caste system. AVAILABLE AT BAREFOOT AND CHAPTERS, AS WELL AS VIJITHA YAPA (ONLINE AND IN STORES) AND BOOKS.LK PRICE: APPROX RS.1000
ANCESTOR STONES
By Aminatta Forna
Ancestor Stones is the story of four lives: Asana, Mariama, Hawa and Serah Kholifa, born to the different wives of a wealthy plantation owner in a Africa where change is just beginning to arrive. Asana, lost twin and head-wife’s daughter. Hawa, motherless child and manipulator of her own misfortune. Mariama, who sees what lies beyond this world. And Serah, follower of a Western-made dream.
Stretching across generations and set against the backdrop of a country’s descent into freefall, Ancestor Stones is a stunning novel about understanding the past and how stories ancient and new shape who we’ve become, and one which offers a different way of seeing the world we share. AVAILABLE AT BAREFOOT AND CHAPTERS, AS WELL AS VIJITHA YAPA (ONLINE AND IN STORES) AND BOOKS.LK PRICE: RS. 1290.00
THE IRON FENCE
By Neluka Silva
Looking towards the gates, Roshini saw two policemen drag a young boy between them and attempt to fling him into a jeep. His shirt was torn and bloodied. He struggled furiously and shouted abuse. She stared at the boy’s face ad suddenly, time stood still. His face was the mirror-image of a face from a long time ago, a face that had haunted her for years. That word would lodge itself into her psyche as life changed radically and events made her grow up suddenly and abruptly. The face of the boy took her back to a time she’d tried so hard to forget, it took her back to regrets she ran away from, that she had pretended did not exist as the mediocrity of everyday life took over. It overwhelmed her sometimes with mundane demands, but also gave her satisfaction, contentment, security and most of all, unconditional love. AVAILABLE AT BAREFOOT AND CHAPTERS, AS WELL AS VIJITHA YAPA (ONLINE AND IN STORES) AND SARASAVI.LK PRICE: RS 900.00
I SHALL NOT HATE
By Izzeldin Abuelaish Dr. Izzeldin Abuelaish - now known simply as “the Gaza doctor” captured hearts and headlines around the world in the aftermath of horrific tragedy: on January 16, 2009, Israeli shells hit his home in the Gaza Strip, killing three of his daughters and a niece.
By turns inspiring and heartbreaking, hopeful and horrifying, this is Abuelaish’s account of a Gazan life in all its struggle and pain. A Palestinian doctor who was born and raised in the Jabalia refugee camp in the Gaza Strip. From the strip of land he calls home (a place where 1.5 million refugees are crammed into 360 square kilometres of land), the Gaza doctor has been crossing the lines that divide the region for most of his life, as a physician who treats patients on both sides of the border and as a humanitarian who sees the need for improved public health and education for women as the way forward in the Middle East.
Additional Info:
“In this book, Doctor Abuelaish has expressed a remarkable commitment to forgiveness and reconciliation that describes the foundation for a permanent peace in the Holy Land.”
— President Jimmy Carter, Nobel Peace Prize laureate AVAILABLE AT BAREFOOT AND CHAPTERS, AS WELL AS VIJITHA YAPA (ONLINE AND IN STORES) PRICE: RS. 2090.00
THE PRISONER OF PARADISE
By Romesh Gunesekera G
When Lucy Ggladwell arrives inn Mauritius from England to live with her aunt and uncle in their grandrand plantation house, her mind iss full of the poemspoem of Keats and tales of romance .
She is nonetheless unprepared for the beauty, fecundity and otherness of this island paradise between Africa and India, where she is to be waited on hand and foot by servants and free to let her thoughts drift on the sea breeze.
If only they did not drift to such problematic subjects as the restrictions of colonial society, or the bigoted outbursts of her uncle, or the disquieting attractions of Don Lambodar, a young translator from Ceylon, himself entangled in thoughts of iniquity and desire and facing a decision which could risk his precarious position. AVAILABLE AT BAREFOOT AND CHAPTERS, AS WELL AS VIJITHA YAPA (ONLINE AND IN STORES) AND SARASAVI.LK PRICE: RS. 1850.00