Apē Gama (Sinhala:අපේ ගම, Tamil:எங்கள் கிராமம்) (lit. Our Village)[1] is a semi-autobiographical book by Sri Lankan author Martin Wickramasinghe detailing the narrator's experiences as a child in Southern Province, Sri Lanka. Initially published in 1940,[1] it was translated into English in 1968 as Lay Bare the Roots. It is seventeen chapters long.
 | |
| Author | Martin Wickramasinghe |
|---|---|
| Translators | Lakshmi de Silva |
| Country | Sri Lanka |
| Language | Sinhala |
| Genre | Fiction |
| Published | 1940 |
| Media type | Book |
| ISBN | 9789558415443 |
Plot edit
A young boy growing up in a village in Ceylon and how he deals with rapid economic and social changes that are going on around him.[2][3]
Reception edit
Charles Hallisey in Literary Cultures in History: Reconstructions from South Asia states that the narrator is "a villager, unself-consciously secure in his local experiences of the world to such a degree that by nature he was 'literary'." "...this villager becomes a tutor to urbanized authors and readers, who must unlearn what they have been taught in school in order to regain the cultural authenticity that survives in the village."[4]
The work was well received by the English educated people of Sri Lanka.[5]
References edit
- ^ a b An Anthology of Modern Writing from Sri Lanka. Association for Asian Studies. 1981. pp. 126–127. ISBN 978-0-8165-0702-3.
- ^ Anderson, Sarah, ed. (2016). Anderson's Travel Companion: A Guide to the Best Non-Fiction and Fiction for Travelling. Routledge. ISBN 9781351958394.
- ^ Samaraweera, Vijaya, ed. (1987). Sri Lanka (Volume 20 of ABC-CLIO World Bibliographical Series). Clio Press. p. 135. ISBN 9780903450331.
- ^ Pollock, Sheldon; Arvind Raghunathan, eds. (2003). Literary Cultures in History: Reconstructions from South Asia. University of California Press. p. 718. ISBN 9780520228214.
- ^ Nyrop, Richard F. (1971). Area Handbook for Ceylon. U.S. Government Printing Office. p. 173.