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
childhoods smoothed tends
Most childhoods are full of anxiety, but that tends to get smoothed over, so you have a sense of nostalgia.
earn expected money published realised
I never expected to earn money out of writing. In fact, the idea of getting published was too bourgeois. Then, in England, I realised that writing a book was something you could do without it being laughable.
books british building discovered fit globe holland library park peculiar seen
In London, I discovered a peculiar building by Holland Park where the globe was shrunk to fit a British perspective, but which had a library with Sri Lankan books I had never seen before.
I like inventing things when I write rather than autobiography.
inner life somebody
I want to keep an inner life alive and, with luck, somebody else's, too.
although grew spend throw time
I grew up in Colombo but was lucky enough to spend a lot of time in the countryside as well. Although there was considerable turbulence, even in the 1950s, it did not throw a shadow on my consciousness.
believe
I must believe that in words we will find what in fury we cannot.
beach cricket despite match miles sea stadium test
Sure, cricket on a beach on the isle of Jura is different from a Test match in a stadium in Galle, 6000 miles away, despite the sea air.
hands passenger reader
A passenger on a road journey is in the hands of a driver; a reader embarking on a book is in the hands of a narrator.
essential forgetting risky
To my mind, forgetting is a risky strategy for living. Memory is essential to us. It is DNA. We need to remember, and we need to imagine. That's why we have books, writing, fiction.
common fellow
Cricket fans all over the world probably have more in common with each other than with their fellow citizens.
almost binds call carries divide form however longing might politics visitor war welsh whatever wherever
Every Sri Lankan, and almost every visitor to Sri Lanka, carries a longing for the place in some small form - hiraeth, the Welsh call it - wherever they go and whatever their background. It binds them however much the war and politics might try to divide them.
slightly
At 16, I started reading trashy stuff, anything slightly naughty and risque.
anchor butter lamb meant word zealand
'Commonwealth' is not a word I ever used growing up in Colombo. There, in the late 1950s, it would have meant little more than New Zealand lamb and Anchor butter at the cold stores.