Asiri’s Quest
This Sunday, we’re pleased to welcome award-winning children’s writer Prashani Rambukwella to the Funday Times. Just last week, she launched ‘Asiri’s Quest’, the exciting sequel to ‘Mythil’s Secret’. (You may remember that Mythil’s Secret won Prashani the Gratiaen Prize in 2009.) Now in ‘Asiri’s Quest,’ we go back to wartime Ceylon on a time-travelling adventure with Mythil and Asiri.
Prashani’s books are fun and entertaining, but most importantly, they’re about Sri Lanka. Mythil lives in a world you and I both know – but thanks to his very strange friends, Mythil is always in the middle of an adventure. What will he get up to this time?
Read on for our interview with Prashani.
Q: What’s been happening with Mythil and Asiri since we saw them last?
A: Mythil’s special yaka friend, Asiri, left the jungle and moved to Colombo to be with Mythil. But Asiri is a tree spirit and the city has made him very weak.
So he can’t do much magic and they are both very sad about this. When Asiri’s Quest begins, Mythil and Asiri are wondering what they can do to help Asiri regain his powers. Mythil has other problems too – he has to face up to some bullies who are making life difficult for him.
Q: What makes yakas such great characters for a book?
A: Yakas are ancient Sri Lankan mythical creatures so it is fantastic to imagine what they might be like if they really existed today. The yakas in my book are able to shape change into human form. They can be invisible. They can vanish from one spot and appear somewhere else. So they are very exciting to be around! The other great thing about them is that they would have lived in Sri Lanka for centuries – through all the most exciting times in history. Imagine what stories they could tell us – if they could only remember!
Q: How was your experience of writing this book different from writing Mythil’s Secret?
A: I wrote ‘Mythil’s Secret’ over eight years – little by little. But the story of Asiri’s Quest had been germinating in my head for two years before I was able to sit down and write it. My first draft of ‘Asiri’s Quest’ took just two weeks to write.
Q: This book has been described as a Harry Potter set in Sri Lanka – how important was it to you to set the story in the world you actually grew up in?
A: Very important. There are too few Sri Lankan books written for our older children in English – fewer still when I was growing up certainly – so focusing on this section of fiction was very important to me.
Q: Can we look forward to following Mythil on more adventures? If yes, have you already begun writing the next book?
A: There are pieces of a third book floating around inside my head but I’ve not started to write it yet.
I need to wait till more of the pieces fall into place before I can start.