DBC – ‘Dirty But Clean’ – Pierre, can lay claim to a personal history that is a great deal stranger than fiction. Growing up, it was lavish Mexican mansions, Bengal tigers and neighbours who gave their daughters 13 cars as wedding presents. In his teens, things only got stranger. With the passing of his father, … Continue reading
Tag Archives: Galle Literary Festival
Ian Rankin: Writing Whydunnits rather than Whodunnits
It’s day one of the Galle Literary Festival, but Ian Rankin is too absorbed in a conversation about British crime fiction to make his way down to the Fort. “Can you imagine Ms. Marple walking into a police station and the cops saying, ‘Oh thank God, Ms. Marple, thank God you’ve arrived to help us … Continue reading
Joanna Trollope: Re-Writing Jane Austen
What would Jane Austen say? Long after she stopped writing them, her novels continue to have a life of their own – in 2009, ‘Pride and Prejudice’ was even overrun by zombies. Now, bestselling British author Joanna Trollope has undertaken to produce a 2013 “update” of ‘Sense and Sensibility’ for HarperFiction. While we couldn’t reasonably … Continue reading
Josceline Dimbleby: Serving Up British Cuisine with a Twist
Josceline Dimbleby’s culinary lexicon has only expanded with her travels. In India, she fell in love with the delicacy of Gujarat’s Jain influenced vegetarian dishes and in Turkey it was Tavuk Gogsu, that famous, tender dessert made with milk and chicken’s breast; in Morocco, it was pigeon pie Bastilla that made her mouth water and … Continue reading
Shyam Selvadurai: The Writing Life and Curating GLF
We ring the bell and from behind the forbidding black gate a cacophony of barks rises to greet us. A smaller door swings open and Shyam Selvadurai pops out, all smiles. As we pass under the portico, I think that if Great Expectations had been set in Sri Lanka, Mrs. Havisham could have lived in … Continue reading
Nethra Samarawickrama: Dowries, Dupattas and Doorsteps: Insiders and Outsiders of the Fort of Galle
Nethra Samarawickrama is most interested in the people whom history has neglected. Visitors to the UN World Heritage Site of Galle Fort find that the presence of the Portuguese, the Dutch and the British is well documented. Inside the Fort’s upscale boutique hotels, colonial artefacts are lovingly preserved, colonial architecture painstakingly restored and tales of … Continue reading
Kiran Desai: The Inheritance of Loss
Currently, the best thing about winning the Booker Prize, as Kiran Desai would have it, is that it brought her here – to our tiny island in the Indian Ocean. “I anticipated my affection for Sri Lanka,” she says smiling. As the sun sinks past the horizon, and a dusky twilight cloaks Galle Fort, Kiran … Continue reading
Smriti Daniel 