The Other One: Stories

by Hasanthika Sirisena

Set in Sri Lanka and America, the ten short stories in this debut collection feature characters struggling to contend with the brutality of a decades-long civil war while also seeking security, love, and hope. The characters are students, accountants, soldiers, servants. They are immigrants and strivers. They are each forced to make sometimes comic, sometimes tragic, choices. What they share, despite what they've endured, is the sustaining power of human connection.

An excerpt from the book:

"All I want to know is when you are coming? When are you bringing my sons, my family?"

She watched as a gecko, tinier than normal, skittered across the far wall. It disappeared into a small crack. The room was very hot, and she hadn't turned on the ceiling fan so that the family could save a little money. She took a handkerchief from her nightstand and wiped the beads of sweat from her forehead and the back of her neck.

"I can't leave malli alone here. He's making progress but -- "

"It will be for two years only. Then you can sponsor him."

"The lawyer says it's not so easy."

"He's a grown man. Let the government take him. The government did this to malli. Let the government pay the price for his care."

Even though there was no chance that her brother Ranjith could hear her, Anoja dropped her voice. "Malli is all alone here. He has nobody but aiya and me."

Genres: Short Stories, Literature

160 pages, Paperback

First published March 4, 2016

About the author

My essays have appeared in the Michigan Quarterly Review, Copper Nickel, Kenyon Review Online, WSQ, and anthologized in This is the Place (Seal Press, 2017). My fiction has been anthologized recently in Every Day People: The Color of Life (Atria Books, 2018), and named a notable story by Best American Short Stories in 2011 and 2012. I have received fellowships from the MacDowell Colony, Yaddo, the Bread Loaf Writers’ Conference and am a Rona Jaffe Writers’ Award recipient. I am currently an associate fiction editor at West Branch literary magazine and visiting fiction faculty at the MFA Program in Writing at the Vermont College of Fine Arts. I am currently an Assistant Professor of English and Creative Writing at Susquehanna University, an associate fiction editor at West Branch, and visiting faculty at the Vermont College of Fine Arts. My short story collection The Other One was the winner of the Juniper Prize for Fiction and was released in 2016. My essay collection Dark Tourist won the 2020 Gournay Prize and will be released in December 2021 by Mad Creek/Ohio State University Press.

I use they/them/their/she/her/hers pronouns.

Reviews

[Paul Ataua · Rating 5 out of 5]

The blurbs tell you this a collection of stories about the Sri Lankan civil war and the effect of the war on people, but nothing could be further from the truth. The war is in there somewhere in the background, but these stories are about complicated people in difficult situations. The stories are powerful and important. It is not very often that you find a new writer who is both fresh and exciting. Hasanthika Sirisena is one such writer. A big five stars.

[em · Rating 4 out of 5]

3.5/5

[Tammy Dominguez · Rating 5 out of 5]

Beautiful, at times, tragic stories of human nature. From reading this book, I have an appreciation for the people of Sri Lanka, their culture and country. As usual when I read books about other places, I just want to GO! I want to know more, to see it first hand. I feel I understand Sri Lankan culture just a wee bit and I desire to know more. I appreciate Hansanthika Sirisena's writing and the voice she gave to this people. One of my favorite passages, "If you go long enough without something, sex, money, even love, you can get to the point you don't need it. But if you suddenly have access to what's missing, get it back into your life, then you'll do whatever it takes to keep that thing. The thought of loss knocks you flat on the floor, your chest caved in, gasping for air."

[Sandy · Rating 5 out of 5]

Having had the privilege of being taught by Sirisena years ago during my undergraduate studies at CCNY made this read even more special for me. Sirisena's grasp on the craft of short story fiction writing, her appreciation for detail and technique, and the nurturing of her young writers' talents has stayed with me, and her book "The Other One" only proved once again that I have learned from one of the best. While reading, I was reminded of her personal accounts of growing up as a Sri Lankan in North Carolina and felt a great sense of connection to, as well as deeply moved by the relationships, struggles, and remarkable moments of her characters in this beautifully written piece.

[Jim · Rating 5 out of 5]

One of my favorite collections of 2016. So many great stories but the first, last and title story are all outstanding and operate in different modes. Can't say enough good things about this book.

[jo · Rating 3 out of 5]

i wasn’t especially blown away by any of the stories but found all of them to be solid. this collection offer sketches into the lives of sri lankans who are carrying the impacts of the civil war with them, regardless of whether or not they directly experienced the war or live in the country. reading the stories one after another highlighted the similarity in voice and construction of each story despite many of them being written in the first person supposedly from the perspective of wildly different characters.

[Kaitlin · Rating 5 out of 5]

Sirisena's writing captivates the heart in a way I've seldom encountered in reading. While the writing's attention to detail, to place and character, is exquisite, there's also a deep personal and empathetic connection to the characters and their stories. I first read an excerpt of one of these stories, Third Country National, in another publication and couldn't get the image of the aquarium out of my head. That's what's so magical about Sirisena's prose—it sticks to you, digs into you, in a way that most fiction these days is too rushed, too plot-driven, to do so. Even a line like "a man can escape only so many times" feels so full of compassion and truth. This collection investigates important human stories, especially those of immigrants and outsiders, allowing us all to remind ourselves what it means to be human, which is such a critical exercise in recent years. I can't wait to read more of Sirisena's work. She's a writer to watch, and one at which to marvel too.

[Elizabeth Muench · Rating 5 out of 5]

Good read

I really enjoyed reading each short story. Every time that I read one of the stories, I felt like I could relate to the characters even through I had never gone through their situations.