Romesh Gunesekera
Romesh Gunesekera
Romesh Gunesekera FRSLis a Sri Lankan-born British author, who was a finalist in the Man Booker Prize for his novel Reef in 1994. He is currently the Chair of the Judges of Commonwealth Short Story Prize competition for 2015...
NationalitySri Lankan
ProfessionAuthor
controls future interested power present
Who controls the present controls the past. There's a power structure, if you like, between the present and the past and the future, and that's what I'm interested in.
future issues malaysia seeing similar whether
Whether we live in Sri Lanka or Malaysia or India, the U.K. or the U.S., we face similar issues of understanding, remembering the past that has made us and seeing the future we want.
With 'Noontide Toll', I wanted to cater to a single story but also collectively more than a single story.
understanding
Writing is incredibly important to me as a way of handling the world, understanding how it works.
imagined people
People who read fiction are different from other people because they are people who are interested in an imagined world.
almost berlin came dealing east europe fantastic found situation stuff wall writers wrote
I was thinking of writers living in East Europe before the Berlin Wall came down. They wrote fantastic stuff but were dealing with a situation that was almost impossible to deal with, but they found a way.
chance couple extremely father jobs lucky nobody question travel
I was very lucky - it wasn't a question of being wealthy; my father was just extremely lucky with the couple of jobs he got. So we got a chance to travel when nobody else could travel.
Sri Lankans of every kind, overwhelmingly the poorest, have been bombed by one side or the other for decades.
works
Sri Lanka is a part of my background: it's not where I live, but it's what I want to explore. And I find it works very well to explore through fiction.
dreamed forms island itself level loves poetry
Sri Lanka is an island that everyone loves at some level inside themselves. A very special island that travellers, from Sinbad to Marco Polo, dreamed about. A place where the contours of the land itself forms a kind of sinewy poetry.
although amazingly business coming folk knew legendary life lived parents people places range sportsmen wider women
My parents knew a wider range of people than most, and so we had actors, journalists, politicians, planters, sportsmen and women and business folk all coming in and out of the places we lived in. Although my parents were not wealthy, they lived a legendary and amazingly cosmopolitan life.
countries shaped
My writing has been shaped by the three countries - Sri Lanka, the Philippines and England - I have lived in.
historical
We live in a world which is changing very fast. What seems contemporary now will be historical in two years.
childhoods smoothed tends
Most childhoods are full of anxiety, but that tends to get smoothed over, so you have a sense of nostalgia.