The “Love Story” is between Nihal Hernando and Padma, the daughter of the Tamil family the Hernandos had rescued during the 1983 ethnic riots. That family had fled to Canada. But when it is time for Padma to marry, they send her back to Sri Lanka to find a “suitable boy” via the arranged marriage proposal system. They might be Canadian citizens now but they want Padma to marry a boy of their own race, religion and caste. Padma, who stays with her aunt in Wellawatte, is invited by the Hernandos to stay at their villa too, where she soon strikes up a friendship with Nihal and his sister Manel, who are close to her in age.
While the Hernandos and Rajanathans (Padma’s family) are close friends, both sets of families are horrified by the developing relationship between their son and daughter. It offends the notions of both the upper caste Sinhalese Christian parents as well as the upper caste Tamil Hindu parents. However, as befits educated parents of the 21st century, they bow to the inevitable (though not before various attempts to dissuade the two lovers), and accept the romance with grace.
The book is well crafted, with various threads being skillfully interwoven to give a colourful but real idea of Sri Lankan life, spanning different decades, cultures and societies. As if all that were not enough, Perera also manages to interweave aspects of the war, the race riots and the tsunami in, bringing to light different characters and how they were affected by it / acted through it.
For so ambitious an undertaking, there is nothing arduous in the book, either in the writing - or for the reader, in the reading. It is one of those “unputdownable” books that will keep the reader turning the pages to know what happened next. I read the book in one night. https://www.amazon.com/author/terrenc...
The “Love Story” is between Nihal Hernando and Padma, the daughter of the Tamil family the Hernandos had rescued during the 1983 ethnic riots. That family had fled to Canada. But when it is time for Padma to marry, they send her back to Sri Lanka to find a “suitable boy” via the arranged marriage proposal system. They might be Canadian citizens now but they want Padma to marry a boy of their own race, religion and caste. Padma, who stays with her aunt in Wellawatte, is invited by the Hernandos to stay at their villa too, where she soon strikes up a friendship with Nihal and his sister Manel, who are close to her in age.
While the Hernandos and Rajanathans (Padma’s family) are close friends, both sets of families are horrified by the developing relationship between their son and daughter. It offends the notions of both the upper caste Sinhalese Christian parents as well as the upper caste Tamil Hindu parents. However, as befits educated parents of the 21st century, they bow to the inevitable (though not before various attempts to dissuade the two lovers), and accept the romance with grace.
The book is well crafted, with various threads being skillfully interwoven to give a colourful but real idea of Sri Lankan life, spanning different decades, cultures and societies. As if all that were not enough, Perera also manages to interweave aspects of the war, the race riots and the tsunami in, bringing to light different characters and how they were affected by it / acted through it.
For so ambitious an undertaking, there is nothing arduous in the book, either in the writing - or for the reader, in the reading. It is one of those “unputdownable” books that will keep the reader turning the pages to know what happened next. I read the book in one night.
https://www.amazon.com/author/terrenc...