Carmel wins the Gratiaen for her debut whodunit
The H. A. I. Goonetileke Prize goes to Malinda Seneviratne
Carmel Miranda was announced the winner of the Gratiaen Prize for 2020 while Malinda Seneviratne walked away with the H. A. I. Goonetileke Prize for Literary Translation for the year. The two prizes were awarded at an online event held in the evening of Friday, July 2.
Winner Carmel Miranda’s debut novel Crossmatch, though ostensibly a detective story, addressed deeper issues and themes while turning an almost surgical and penetrating spotlight on Colombo’s medical community.
By profession a consultant anaesthetist, Dr Miranda said she is ‘thrilled’ to have won, especially given that she did not have a background in creative writing. That fact, she hopes, will encourage other writers ‘out there’ to take up their pens and come out with their stories. Her win, she modestly adds, is testimony that anyone can, with enough toil put in, be a writer.
For the Gratiaen Prize it was a glittering shortlist this year in COVID affected times, made up of a former winner, some of Colombo’s most maverick literati as well as debutantes bringing startling insight into their respective niche worlds. The genres reflected the eclectic spirit: short stories with a post-colonial flavour, a travelogue retracing the footprints of a medieval traveller, a play that is a psychological thriller, a medical whodunit and a novel that broke all the rules of storytelling.
The H. A. I. Goonetileke Prize, awarded for the ninth year, was for Malinda Seneviratne’s faithful rendition of a Sinhala novel that is as epic and moving as it is a landmark work of literature- Senkottang by Mahinda Prasad Masimbula.
The Gratiaen Prize was established by Michael Ondaatje with the money he won for the Booker Prize for 1992 for his novel, The English Patient. Named after his mother Doris Gratiaen, it is the most prestigious literary prize for Sri Lankan creative writing in English.
The H.A.I. Goonetileke Prize commemorates the great bibliophile and legendary librarian at the Peradeniya University who was also Ondaatje’s close friend.