Tournevis at the blog Le Pouding à l’arsenic has posted an early review of the colonialism-themed anthology We See a Different Frontier. The anthology will be published this month in both print and electronic versions and includes my first professional sale, a short story called Rembering Turinam.
I’m honored to have been called out for particular attention in the review:
I could laud every single story in the collection, but let me turn the light on two in particular that have stayed with me and even found their way into my dreams.
[…]
A more powerful exploration of Politics of Memory is found in the incredibly well-written, nearly perfect “Remembering Turinam” by N.A. Ratnayake. Here the scholar Salai walks from his world’s (a future-Earth maybe) equivalent of a university the Heremitian Anushasan, formely [sic] specialized in the exploration of the abstract sciences. He goes to visit his grand-father, a former member of the same Anushasan, now living as a near hermit in his very final days. […] Ratnayake is brilliant in showing the subtleties of Salai’s colonized mind. More importantly, the author displays in all its tragedy the paradoxes of cultural survival in the face of conquest: how only those who choose assimilation can live long enough to ultimately reclaim the culture that has been willfully lost.
Wow! I am so happy to hear that others have enjoyed my stories, and that they have found deep personal meaning within them. Nothing like the warm fuzzies as motivation to keep writing!
