Shavindra Fernando; The Vague Poetess ...as paperback
Threshold of Rebellion
At two o’clock in the morning, the bus returning with the cast arrived at the university.
Suddenly the headlights flashed onto a barricade of old barrels across the lane, and three guards stopped the bus.
“Sir, didn’t you hear?”
“No, what happened?”
“Yesterday evening…. Mr. Henry, ….shot dead .”
“No!”
They remained in stunned silence.
”We were in Colombo with the play…we didn’t hear”
Then one of the guards turned around slowly and pointed towards the Senate House, which glowed as if a great fire was beyond it.
“…and then this happened …. at about midnight.”
“What…. happened?”
“Sir,….ten boys and a girl,…..they have been beheaded,… and they are burning on a pyre of tyres.”
MEDIA REVIEWS
“Shavindra Fernando’s novel, “The Vague Poetess” (1999) tells of shocking events in a language that appears deceptively unable to bear the load expected of it. What is timely about this novel is its insistence upon an interiority that betrays an overlapping crux of ignorance, fear, and desire. The narrative texture varies between blank dialogue, subtext expunged, and a detached lyrical voice, as if writing at an enormous distance from the material”.“Fernando’s depiction of horrific violence is no fiction. The culminating sequence of revolt and violence that includes the decapitation of eleven young people, their bodies left to burn in a makeshift funeral pyre upon the steps of the Senate House of the University, is not fiction at all”. “This mirrors the strangely naive focus of the university students who choose to go through with their production of Lorca, seemingly oblivious to the rising chaos around them”. Professor Upul Abeyratne, Professor of Political Science, University of Peradeniya, Sri Lanka
Publisher: Shieldcrest Publishing
ISBN: 9781915657770
AUTHOR ....Shavi Fernando …… shavipf@yahoo.co.uk
