Book Talk

Sasanka Perera, Violence and the Burden of Memory: Remembrance and Erasure in Sinhala Consciousness, 2016, pp. 322. New Delhi: Orient BlackSwan. ISBN 978-81-250-6051-2.

~ Ranmalie Jayawardana, Queen’s University Belfast Perera opens Violence and the Burden of Memory with personal recollections of a childhood friend who found success in the army, and ultimately died in battle. As Perera walks the reader through memories of his old friend, pondering how he is remembered today and through whom his story is […]

Book Talk

Sasanka Perera, Warzone Tourism in Sri Lanka: Tales from Darker Places in Paradise, 2016, pp. 231 (with illustrations). New Delhi and Thousand Oaks: Sage Publishing. ISBN 978-93-515-0922-6.

~ Nira Wickramasinghe, Leiden University In May 2009 the secessionist war that had pitted the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) against the security forces of the government of Sri Lanka since 1983 came to a brutal end. Prabhakaran, the ruthless leader of the LTTE, and countless other combattants lay dead around the Nandikadal  lagoon, […]

Book Talk

Ronit Ricci, ed., Exile in Colonial Asia: Kings, Convicts, Commemoration, 2016, pp. 294. Honolulu: University of Hawai’i Press. ISBN: 9780824853754

~ Nira Wickramasinghe, Leiden University This elegant volume that grew out of a workshop held at the Australian National University in 2013 brings together ten essays that focus on exile, through three central themes: kings (a shorthand for members of royal families), convicts and commemoration. It is situated at the intersection of histories of banishment, […]

Book Talk

Steven Kemper, Rescued from the Nation: Anagarika Dharmapala and the Buddhist World,2015, pp. 368. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. ISBN 9780226199078.

~ Sasanka Perera, South Asian University Growing up Sinhala and Buddhist in Sri Lanka, one cannot but be familiar with Anagarika Dharmapala (1864-1933).  As many of us have known as a matter of quotidian socialization, Dharmapala was the preeminent spokesperson and activist of Sri Lanka’s Buddhist revivalism in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, […]

Book Talk

Pavan Kumar Malreddy, Orientalism. Terrorism, Indigenism: South Asian Readings in Postcolonialism, 2015. New Delhi: Sage. ISBN 978-93-515-0142-8.

~ Sasanka Perera, South Asian University At the most fundamental level, the title of Pavan Kumar Malreddy’s book poses a serious epistemological and logistical question for readers. That is, how would such a modest book of 169 pages do justice to the vast and almost endless thematic possibilities suggested by the crucial terms in  the […]

Book Talk

Benjamin B. Cohen, In the Club: Associational Life in Colonial South Asia, 2015, pp. 211. New Delhi: Orient Black Swan. ISBN: 978 81 250 5908 0.

~ Nilanjana Sen, Independent Researcher By the nineteenth century, in colonial India, attempts were made to bridge the distance between the political world of the colonial state and Indian society.  But this was also the period when the colonial civil society was developing in South Asia independent of the state. Benjamin B. Cohen in his […]