 Sri
Lanka >> Leading Personalities |
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Is an eminent scholar and educationist whose period
of office was eventful. During his short term of office
he tried to bring about reforms and re-organize the
school.
Daya Dissanayake Born and living in Sri Lanka, Daya
Dissanayake has published three novels. Out of these,
two are historical novels and one is a freely available
e-novel, The Saadhu Testament.
Published works
Katbitha
The healer & the drug pusher
The bastard goddess
Vessan nowu vedun
The saadhu testament.
In
1939 a thirteen year old Jewish girl from Essen,
Germany, - Anneliese Katz - arrived in England.
Her parents had managed to send her there to
stay with relations, but they themselves could
not emigrate, and were murdered in Chelmno,
Poland, five years later. Anneliese went to
school, then trained to be a nurse. She met,
and married, a Sri Lankan Post-graduate and
settled down with him in Sri Lanka. |
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In 1956 she became a Sri Lankan citizen. Her husband
was appointed Professor and Head of Department of the
Medical Faculty of Colombo, and she devoted the first
years in her new home country to her young family, -
three children from her husband's first marriage, and
four together with him. In the sixties she began to
study journalism, and in 1971 she made her debut with
a slim volume of poems titled And the Sun That Sucks
The Earth to Dry.
A
Sri Lankan writer of short stories and essays. A journalist
by profession, she is also deeply committed to the struggle
for children's rights and against sex tourism - including
publishing The Sexual Exploitation of Children in Sri
Lanka (1984). Mists on a lake, a collection of short
stories, won two Sri Lankan awards for best English
fiction in 1985/86. She has also published two books
on the ancient chronicles of Sri Lanka, Mahavamsa and
Culavamsa, a biography of former Prime minister Sirivamo
Bandranaike and books for children.
Punyakante
Wijenaike is a Sri Lankan writer of short stories
and novels. Her first tale took up traditional
village themes, although she has lived most
of her life in Colombo and later turned to urban
themes as well. In a preface to The Waiting
Earth, her first novel, she herself wrote: "As
in my book of short stories, The Third Woman,
there is no high endeavour and no moralizing. |
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The
characters and the incidents in the book were real to
me and I hope they will be romantically real to the
reader." Nevertheless, she has been called "one
of the most underestimated fiction writers currently
at work in the English language" (Alastair Niven)
and her fiction has been taught in university courses
in Britain, Australia and other countries. The tyranny
of a community or a group towards its weaker members
is a recurrent theme in her writings. Her latest novel,
Amulet, was the winner of a literary prize for the best
Sri Lankan book in English in 1994.
Yasmine
Gooneratne, Writer & Scholar |
Yasmine
Gooneratne holds a Personal Chair in English
Literature at Macquarie University, New South
Wales. Born in Sri Lanka, educated at Bishop's
College, Colombo, she graduated from the University
of Ceylon in 1959, received a PhD in English
Literature from Cambridge University in 1962,
and in 1981 received the first (and up to date,
only) higher doctoral degree of Doctor of Letters
(DLitt) ever awarded by Macquarie University. |
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From 1989 to 1993 she was Foundation Director of her
University's Postcolonial Literatures & Languages
Research Centre. In 1990 she was created an Officer
of the Order of Australia for distinguished service
to literature and education. Her 16 published books
include critical studies of Jane Austen, Alexander
Pope, and the contemporary novelist and screen writer
Ruth Prawer Jhabvala.
She
is also the author of volumes of literary essays and
poems, short stories, a family memoir and two novels,
one of which (A Change of Skies) was awarded the Marjorie
Barnard Literary Award for Fiction in 1991. Both her
novels have been shortlisted for the Commonwealth Writers
Prize.
Sri-Lanka
native Michael Ondaatje is a literary phenomenon:
a best-selling writer, one whose work is a stunning
fusion of jazz rhythms, film montage technique,
and profoundly beautiful language. Although
he is best known as a novelist, Ondaatje's work
also encompasses memoir, poetry, and film, and
reveals a passion for defying conventional form. |
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In
his landmark novel, The English Patient -- later made
into the Academy Award-winning film -- he explores
the history of people history does not explore, intersecting
four diverse lives at the end of World War II. Ondaatje
is himself an interesting intersection of cultures.
Born in the former Ceylon of Dutch/Indian ancestry,
he was raised in London, and is now a Canadian citizen.
From
the memoir of his childhood, Running in the Family,
to his Governor-General's award-winning book of poetry,
There's a Trick With a Knife I'm Learning To Do, to
his classic novel, The English Patient, Michael Ondaatje
casts a spell over his readers. And having won the
British Commonwealth's highest honor - the Booker
Prize - Ondaatje has taken his rightful place as a
contemporary literary treasure.
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