Cricket and Sri Lankan Author Shehan Karunatilaka

I’m over at the Huffington Post today, writing about debut novlist, Shehan Karunatilaka, a Sri Lankan writer with talent to burn. You can read the interview over there. Here’s an excerpt.

On April secnd, Sri Lanka takes on India in the final for the ICC World Cup. What better day on which to think about Shehan Karunatilaka’s debut novel, Chinaman, which has been described as being “ambitious, playful and strikingly original, [a novel] about cricket and… the story of modern day Sri Lanka through its most cherished sport.” Indeed, cricket-mad Indian reviewers have flocked to sing his praises, calling it “improbably potent and toothsome.”

The novel was released by Random House, India in February, 2011, but before it did, it had already won the top award for literature in English in Sri Lanka, the Gratiaen Prize, endowed by none other than Sri Lanka’s most famous literary native son, Michael Ondaatje, in 1992. The annual award, named after Ondaatje’s mother, Doris Gratiaen, is given to the best work of literary writing in English by a resident Sri Lankan.