New book by Chhimi out
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Chhimi Tenduf-La’s second book, Panther, published by HarperCollins India, will be released in Sri Lanka before the official launch elsewhere. The book will be available in all leading Sri Lankan bookstores by June 15. ‘Panther’ follows ‘The Amazing Racist’ which was released last year and tells the story of a former child soldier who wins a cricket scholarship to an elite school and his troubled rite of passage to adulthood.
Said the author, ‘Although I have attempted to inject humour into ‘Panther’, it is a harder-hitting and more disturbing book than ‘The Amazing Racist’. In my opinion, it is a much better novel, but I guess that is for others to judge. Test readers have said they liked the suspense and plot twists and found the characters more relatable and endearing. My wife took 196 days to read my first book, but finished Panther in one sitting, even missing an episode of the Kardashians in the process which really worried me.’
‘I set out to write a coming-of-age, fish-out-of-water high school story, but the book also explores the trauma of being a child soldier, and although it will look like I am writing about the war here, I am not. I have made up a terrorist group, the Panthers, because I think it would be arrogant of me to pretend to know the ins and outs of the real war here.’
Chhimi Tenduf-La will be at Barefoot Bookshop between 11 a.m. and 4.30 p.m. on Saturday, June 20 to sign copies of ‘Panther’ purchased there. Panther will be available at Barefoot, VijithaYapa, Trunk (Cinnamon Grand and Ramada), Odel, Paradise Road, Sarasavi, MD Gunesena and Expographics. It will also be available online at Takas.lk.