A S H Smyth

DISCLAIMER: Ten years ago, I reviewed Shehan Karunatilaka’s debut novel, Chinaman, for this newspaper. It was brilliant, I said, and everyone should buy it. I noted, though, for form’s sake, that I’d done some light proofreading of the manuscript, and hoped that this would not be taken either as cause or symptom of inoperable bias. [...]

Sri Lankan erotica comes of age (prematurely) Blue: stories for adults ed. Ameena Hussein It is practically impossible to write good erotica. By which we mean literary porn. By which we mean ‘even DH Lawrence couldn’t really pull it off’. In the UK there’s actually an annual Bad Sex Award, routinely won (‘won’) by mainstream [...]