Shyam Selvadurai at Bloor Branch
It has been eight years since Shyam Selvadurai's last novel, and so when The Hungry Ghosts was published in April, this welcome news to his many loyal readers. Selvadurai is not only a very fine writer, but an engaging and interesting speaker, and you will have a chance to hear and meet him on Wednesday, September 18, 7 pm at the Bloor/Gladstone branch.
Selvadurai's novels have all been set in Sri Lanka, but this one differs in that a good portion of it is set in Canada. As he told Now journalist Susan G. Cole a few months ago, this posed a challenge:
“I hadn’t written about Canada before," he says, with his gentle lilt. 'I always think of a literary voice as a singing voice – that I’m a
mezzo-soprano and the material is operatic. My voice and the Sri Lankan
material match up.
'It was hard to find the language to render Canada. It kept sounding
too cutesy, too catering, too much like the kind of immigrant life that
people are used to reading about.'
"And that’s not what he was after. He wanted to reflect the experience
of his family and friends in Canada, not that of newcomers struggling
with language or isolating themselves in small, like-minded enclaves –
the hurdles described in works by Amy Tan or Jhumpa Lahiri, for example.
'My mother is not a sheltered woman who wants to stay at home, wear her
sari, go out to the Bridlewood Mall and not speak English and not have
an analysis of the situation. She’s like the character in the book who
says, "My supervisor can’t spell, and her grammar is worse than mine."'
—Now, April 11-18, 2013
Selvadurai's books are a pleasure to read, and The Hungry Ghosts is no exception. But his books also teach the reader a great deal about political and social reality in Sri Lanka. His background–mixed Sinhalese and Tamil–has perhaps given him a good vantage point. Funny Boy is set against the backdrop of the anti-Tamil violence of the early 1980s and it offers a very clear picture of those events and a sympathetic portrayal of the Tamils who ended up fleeing this violence. Cinnamon Gardens, too, opens up the society of colonial Ceylon in a fascinating and evocative way.
If you cannot make the September 18 reading, you will have another chance to hear Shyam Selvadurai speak–he will be at Toronto Reference Library on October 17, 7 pm as part of the eh List author series.
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