In his extraordinary first book, Ashok Ferrey chronicles, in a gently probing voice, the journeys of his questing characters. Absurd, sad, scathing and generous, but mostly wickedly funny, 'Colpetty People' presents modern Sri Lankans as they navigate worlds between...
Love in the Tsunami brings together a selection of Ashok Ferrey’s short fiction and includes four brand-new stories. The title story, set against the Boxing Day tsunami of 2004 describes Veena Patel’s all-too-brief encounter with forbidden love. ‘But Did I Tell You I...
Piyumi Segarajasingham is a young barrister in eighties London, half Tamil and half Sinhalese, and newly responsible for her family’s share of an inheritance in Sri Lanka. The servants’ quarters of a house called Serendipity in Colombo’s colonial quarter, Cinnamon...
‘I was born ugly. That’s what my mother always said.’ So begins the story of young Sonny Mahadewala who leads a dual life: between his adoptive England where he cohabits with a privileged American; and the mixed blessings of Mahadewala Walauwa – the big house on the...
Our Sri Lankan narrator visits his friend Joe in Italy, where joe attends a special course-in higher (or shall we say lower) studies in women. Italians - much like Sri Lankans - live at home through marriage, death and sometimes even beyond the pale. An accompanying...
It is a universally acknowledged truth that an immigrant in England must be in want of a visa. In 1980s London, young Sri Lankan Chamath, recently down from Oxford with a degree in Maths, struggles to reconcile himself with the workplace. When his father writes him to...
Having lost his mother at a young age, Sanjay de Silva lives in Colombo under the thumb of a controlling father. When his father is diagnosed with cancer, he feels the ground shift under his feet, the balance of power realigning. Though it is something he has dreamed...