The best of Sinhala fiction in 2025
As a New Year approaches and resolutions have to be made, The Sunday Times proposes a peek into our vernacular literature – infinitely rich and sophisticated and “light years ahead of our English writing” as acclaimed bilingual author Madhubashini Disanayaka Ratnayaka said. Here we speak to the laureates of the year we are bidding adieu [...]
Sri Lanka’s ‘water champion’ proud of work initiated by Appe Lanka
Many are the gratifying memories Shaan Corea recalls after being given a UAE Embassy Award as a “Water Champion” – a title that fits her, given the crusades she has been leading with her organization Appe Lanka to secure clean water for people of our rural areas. As we sit in her Christmas-decorated home in [...]
A path to literature thanks to Radio Ceylon and Dostoyevsky in 1954
In around 1954, Radio Ceylon, in its Sinhala broadcast, serialised Dostoyevsky’s Crime and Punishment. I was a nine-year-old at the time. The reading of a translation of Dostoyevsky’s classic, partly dramatised with accompanying music, was, even for the child in me, riveting. We had in our home one of those HMV Valve Radios, housed in [...]
Letters to the Editor
The need of the hour is a national plan for reconstruction The loss of life and property damage caused by the recent cyclone and flood is significant. Cyclone Ditwah can be described as the most severe natural disaster in recent history. The property damage incurred exceeds that of the tsunami, and efforts to find missing [...]
Appreciations
Those Pera days and golden memories of ‘Mac’ Ernest Thalayasingham Macintyre I first met Mac and Nalini in my first term at university, when all three of us had small roles in the last play Professor Lyn Ludowyke produced for the Peradeniya University Dramatic Society. At that time, they were simply two fellow undergraduates, showing [...]
You step into a cafe and leave as art enthusiasts
Sitting in the De Mel Building on Chatham Street, Fort, linking an old Colombo landmark with a new attempt to give Sri Lankan artists the space and support they have long needed, is the Radicle gallery. Just as artists across the globe will tell you that it can be difficult to make ends meet, gallery [...]
The quiet grace of being mildly exhausted (and thankful)
We wake up every day and valiantly attempt to be the best versions of ourselves or, often, just functioning versions. We spend our precious hours ticking off a thousand small, repetitive acts. The alarm clock, the first sip of that criminally overpriced coffee, the inevitable gridlock commute, the Herculean effort of answering an email that [...]
Mother and daughter on a shared journey in poetry
Unsaid Things, a poetry collection by mother and daughter Pia Hatch and Lessie Dayananda, that brings together two generations of lived experience was launched earlier this month. Though written independently over time, the writers’ voices come together - two journeys finding one shared space on the page. Published by The Jam Fruit Tree Publications, the [...]
An English teacher looks back in this debut novel
In his debut novel ‘Heard Melodies’, Dr. Kularatne Suriyaarachchi, an instructor and teacher educator, emerges as a gifted writer with fluid prose and insightful observations. With the gentle humour, which is perhaps the author’s gift, the book chronicles the life’s journey of an English teacher who navigates through education thriving in greater achievements. Chapters roll [...]
CLAF returns along with future writers programme
The HSBC Ceylon Literary & Arts Festival (CLAF) has announced the third edition of its Future Writers Programme, reaffirming its commitment to nurturing the next generation of Sri Lankan creative voices. Its first edition winner Savin Edirisinghe was awarded the prestigious 32nd Gratiaen Prize, becoming one of the youngest recipients of the award. The Future [...]