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Monthly Archives: May 2010

SOSL steppes up

In a programme frankly unimaginable by any orchestra not at the very top of its game, it was depressing to see the Symphony Orchestra of Sri Lanka open last Sunday’s concert with a return to ‘form’, another slack and soupy rendition of their own national anthem. The second national anthem was rather rousing – the […]

The greatest Googly (n)ever bowled?

Chinaman: the legend of Pradeep Mathew – Shehan Karunatilaka Chinaman is brilliant. Brilliant, I tell you. If you don’t have a spare Rs. 800 to rush out and buy it right now, then starve yourself/rent a trishaw/sell your grandmother – whatever it takes to raise the cash. Can we leave it there? No, I suppose […]

Æsop revised

I I was walking in the desert outside the city when I saw, coming towards me, a woman. She was alone, her face veiled against the whip of the sand. ‘Who are you?’ I asked, ‘and what are you doing out here on your own?’  ‘I am Truth,’ she replied. ‘I came to live in the […]

Drowning in a tsunami of cliché?

The Gratiaen Prize 2009 The Gratiaen Prize – for those of you not up on your South Asian literary gongs – is an annual award given to Sri Lankan writers for creative writing in English, f(o)unded in 1993 by Michael Ondaatje, with his English Patient Booker winnings. Writing-in-English is a small crowd here – ‘here’ […]

So far, So-malia*

Somali Islamists go to war – against each other. For The First Post. — * no, that line didn’t make the edit.