Book Review: Sam’s Story by Elmo Jayawardene
(First published in The New Indian Express, 02 August 2009.) Sam is poor, Sinhalese, and a servant in the Master’s River House. His only best friend is the owners’ dog Brutus. Sam is someone who can never figure out what a problem is, someone who doesn’t know why people cry. He has never learnt anything, not even how to write his name. He is a village idiot who doesn’t know what breasts are, but then, surprisingly, he knows about the Tamil militants. Employing the first person narrative throughout the text, Sam’s Story succeeds in its attempt to imitate the raw, sparse prose style of Hemingway — the stark simplicity blends with the irr

Books and Blogging: My Side of the Story
This presentation was made at the Panel Discussion on The Digital Public Sphere: Books in the Age of New Media, Oct. 15, 2009, Iowa City Public Library as part of the 2009 Obermann Humanities Symposium PLATFORMS FOR PUBLIC SCHOLARS. Professor Teresa Mangum at the Department of English, University of Iowa invited me to this, and I had the privilege of discussing with important literary personalities. Translated into direct non-roundabout speech, it means that I was overwhelmed, and scared, and frightfully unsure of what I was going to say. There was essayist Scott McLemee, and the Internationa

Two links: an interview and an essay
Back from SFO, but I am not going to write anything here..  If I verbalize things too soon, I just guess it could end up being superficial… So, will instead just share two links (one is an interview, the other is a panel paper I read in Iowa).. This interview (by Dr.Ujjwal Jana appeared in Post-colonial Text. Feels like an impossible dream come true.. it’s a very, very prestigious place to be in.. and even more, this is my best (and most extensive) interview to date in which I address a lot of issues which are really, really important to me.. Pls. chk it out here

Rough-cut schedule
This monday I got back from a helluva weekend at Pittsburgh (I was in about six events crammed into two and a half days) and I kept eating as if I was eating for a whole family. Like once every two hours. Here, in Iowa City, I starve most of the time. But compared to my Indian standards, I am doing great where the consumption of food is concerned. I guess seeing all the gleefully chubby Americans has done wonders to my body image. More on that bit later… So what I did at Pittsburgh? Since I am not yet into a serious diary writing this blog should bear the brunt of my sudden confessional mode/mood. I read at Seton Hill on Thursday night (and on opening football nig