A humorous and very personal, autobiographical account of growing up in Sri Lanka through the years of deprivation and plenty. The trials and tribulations, real and imagined of the heroine Manuka, in tandem with her view of the country’s progress on the slippery road to democracy. They are about the mindset of a population informed by the geographical limitations an island and imprisoned in a conflict between myth and reality.
It begins in the 1963 and ends with the ‘83 riots. It’s an urban book where the protagonist is a young girl, born in ‘63 who relates the political idiocies with the characteristic humor of urban irreverence and irrelevance.
Manuka Wijesinghe’s first attempt at a novel is a saga that takes you through the first twenty years of her life, struggling with growing pains analogous to Sri Lanka’s turbulent politics. A reality that may or may not have been shared by all, but one that many will relate to.
Set in Ceylon, later Sri Lanka, it is a mad, bad, humorous, irreverential and very personal autobiographical account of growing up in Sri Lanka through the years of deprivation and plenty. The trials and tribulations real and imagined of the heroine Manuka, in tandem with her view of the country’s progress on the slippery road to democracy.