by Prof. Wimal Dissanayake
The anthropomorphizing basic principle of aesthetic reflection has nothing in common with mere subjectivism. – Georg Lukacs
(December 10, Colombo, Sri Lanka Guardian) Gunadasa Amarasekera’s latest book of criticism, Nosevuna Kadapatha (Unused Mirror) proposes a timely re-assessment of the Sinhala novel, which he sees as being on a steady path of decline. In this book, which is written with verve, erudition, sardonic humour and a sense of urgency, Amarasekera invites the reader to reflect on the plight of the Sinhala novel and the norms and categories by which we choose to evaluate it. Here we find a superior cultural critic at the summit of his powers mapping the terrain of modern Sinhala fiction with brilliant insights. Nosevuna Kadapatha is a splendidly eloquent commentary on the state of the novel, both local and global, and as the author points out, there are interesting interconnections between the two.
The dominant trope subtending Gunadasa Amarasekera’s analysis of the modern Sinhala novel is that of the mirror – mirror as promoting social reflection as well as self-definition. The author starts out with a troubling conundrum. While we boast of high literacy and the population has increased steadily, the readership for fiction has declined palpably. While Piyadasa Sirisena’s novels sold in large numbers and Martin Wickremasinghe’s fiction appealed to an equally significant number of readers, more recent novels barely sell over a thousand copies. Amarasekera begins his analysis by pondering this situation. This is not merely a question of popularity; more importantly, this calls attention to the nature of critical culture that we inhabit.
In diagnosing this disconcerting predicament, Gunadasa Amarasekera focuses on two overlapping reasons. The first is that the novel has ceased to display any vital connection with the important social issues of the time and reflections on them. Piyadasa Sirisena, despite his numerous artistic shortcomings, fashioned the novel into an important vehicle of social commentary. Martin Wickremasinghe continued this line of thinking while avoiding the artistic deficiencies that marred Sirisena’s fiction. According to Gunadasa Amarasekera what is unsettling about the modern Sinhala is that it has ceased to cultivate that vital connection between fiction and sociality.
In a book currently in the press and expected to be released shortly titled Modern Sinhala Novel and the Public Sphere: Three Illustrative Moments’, I advance a similar argument. In this book, I have selected for analysis the novels of Piyadasa Sirisena, the trilogy of Martin Wickremasinghe and the heptology of Gunadasa Amarasekera to illustrate the complex ways in which these works played a vital role in the local public sphere, instigating important social discussions. Some decades ago, Amarasekera, in his critical writings, underlined the need to promote an elevated conversation regarding literature and social experience. Unfortunately, this never materialized and the consequences are here for all of us to see. The elevated conversation that Gunadasa Amarasekera focuses on relates closely to the social scientific trope of the Habermasian public sphere that I invoke in my book.
The second reason is the non-emergence of a vigorous and wholesome tradition of literary criticism in Sinhala. Ediriweera Sarachchandra, in his pioneering work Modern Sinhala Fiction, which was first written in English, laid the foundation for Sinhala fictional analysis. He discussed the works of early novelists such as A. Simon de Silva, Piyadasa Sirisena, Martin Wickremasinghe, and W. A. Silva, and pointed out how the novels of Wickremasinghe were superior to the works of the others. In order to enforce his judgment, he utilized three norms of analysis, realism in the sense of credibility, psychological complexity of the characters and the formal coherence and consistency. These were indeed adequate for the job at hand. The second important critic of modern Sinhala fiction was Martin Wickremasinghe. His criticism, like that of many creative writers of distinction ( T. S. Eliot is an obvious example) was an extension, and rationalization of his creative pursuits. Wickremasinghe took the novel to be a cultural text that inscribed the social and cultural forces at play in society. The sense of cultural authenticity was central to his mode of evaluation. The third important critic of Sinhala fiction, as demonstrated in this book, is Gunadasa Amarasekera. In his earlier essays, as well as in Nosevuna Kadapatha, he has gone beyond his two predecessors to locate the novel in a space of cultural interplay both local and global. He has sought to extend some of Wickremasinghe’s preoccupations by infusing them with a greater measure of social and political analysis, paying closer attention to global discursive influences and concomitant local social formations.
The problem with Sinhala fiction criticism is the absence of a vigorous tradition. The Peradeniya school under the stewardship Ediriweera Sarachchandra was expected to pave the way, but as Gunadasa Amarasekera points out, the bilingual intelligentsia that it produced was swept off its feet by the desire for imitation of Western models inadequately comprehended. The newer universities fared far worse. And during the past two decades or so, it is apparent that Sinhala literary criticism has dwindled into a pathetic spectacle of mud-slinging and ad hominem attacks, undermining the power and the validity of literary creation. The generality of the readership lost contact with world literature, and there were a few who resorted to name-dropping and sterile imitation of Western forms without any serious understanding of their strengths, weaknesses and relevance to the local context Amarasekera is suggesting that the desire for imitation that marked the Peradeniya school has now reached epidemic proportions in the absence of any countervailing critical powers. This passion for imitation, it seems to me, derives from an undialectical understanding of modernity. It is this sorry state of affairs that Amarasekera is seeking to rectify by calling attention to some important wellsprings of inspiration. In this regard, his focus on literary critics such as Ian Watt and George Lukacs who are now considered old-fashioned and passé merit serious re-evaluation. Ian Watt’s focus on realism and the novel form, the reading public and fiction, and Lukacs’ exposition of the concept of realism are highly significant.
There is a complex argument that runs through the pages of Gunadasa Amarasekera’s new book of criticism. If the reader is prepared to stay with the curve of his thought he or she would be amply rewarded with insight and wisdom. It is vitally connected to the concept of realism and the productive ways in which it has to be re-imagined. Sarachchandra took an important step in pressing this concept into service; however, as Amarasekera rightly points out, he had a narrow vision of it; he equated it with credibility which is of course one aspect of it. In this book, Amarasekera has sought to move beyond this constrictive approach and claim a large territory of operation for this concept. In order to understand the true significance of his move, we need to focus on the formulations of Georg Lukacs. Lukacs is, in many ways, the guiding spirit in this book as well as in Amarasekera’s heptology of novels beginning with ‘Gamanaka Mula.’
It is indeed the considered judgment of most discerning literary scholars and critics that the Hungarian thinker Georg Lukacs is one of the greatest and most perceptive Marxist thinkers of the twentieth century. For example, two of the most highly regarded literary scholars, Fredric Jameson and Terry Eagleton, single him out as the most distinguished Marxist critic of modern times. His views have played an important role in Amarasekera’s thinking. This is, of course, not to suggest that Amarasekera has absorbed Lukacs’ views indiscriminately; what he has done is to engage those views critically. Let us, for example, consider the notion of reflection that is central to both Lukacs and Amarasekera’s formulations. That the novel is a reflection of society is a belief that is widespread among scholars and critics alike. However, Lukacs glosses this idea in a way that bears the imprint of his distinctive way of theorizing questions of literature, history an social formation.. It is indeed his firm view that to reflect society is not merely to catch the outward appearances; it is, rather, to penetrate to the deeper layers of social existence. It is because of this conviction that Lukacs holds in such low esteem the naturalists writings of a novelist like Emile Zola.
Gunadasa Amarasekera’s approach to the concept of realism, as delineated in Nosevuna Kadapatha is similar; he focuses on the inner workings of society. Both Lukacs and Amarasekera call attention to the importance of a deeply informing historical consciousness in this effort. What is lacking in many of the Sinhala novels published in recent times, as well as critical writings, is this guiding historical consciousness. In his book of criticism Gunadasa Amarasekera has focused in a productive way on the intersecting concepts of reflection, realism and historical consciousness as a way of making the Sinhala novel a vital adjunct of the local public sphere and promoting the higher conversation among intellectuals that he ardently longs for.
The concept of realism is at the centre of Amarasekera’s argument in his new book. It is also a concept that is central to Lukacs’ conceptualizations. It is closely related to the idea of mirroring and both emanate from his approach to the understanding of societies on the move. It is no exaggeration to state that there is no other analyst who has explored the meaning of realism with the comprehension and nuanced understanding than Lukacs. It is vitally connected to his epistemology. While Gunadasa Amarasekera’s thinking shows great similarities to that of Lukacs, it is important to point out that Amarasekera is aiming to go beyond Lukacs; he is gesturing towards a moral realism, a complex moral engagement with the dynamics of social existence in a way that Lukacs does not. This is clearly evident in Nosevuna Kadapatha.
There are a number of other concepts that Amarasekera calls attention to in his book. In the interests of space, let me focus on two others. The idea of cosmopolitanism has surfaced in a compellingly powerful way in recent cultural criticism. The stock of this concept has risen sharply in the international marketplace of ideas. Cosmopolitanism is being valorized as signifying a new mode of imagination, a novel from of freedom. It focuses on trans-local and fluid subject-positions and the increasing globalization of capital and modalities of migrancies. The loss of cultural anchorage promoted by cosmopolitanism takes on an aura of self-validation, and the metropolitan novelist has become the official scribe celebrating this event. This concept seems to have found favor among some Sinhala writers as well. It is also one that informs deeply the discourse of what Amarsekera terms the global novel. Amarsekera, however, points to the counter-productive nature of this concept.
The idea of hybridity goes hand in hand with cosmopolitanism. What Gunadasa Amarasekera is seeking to point out is that to imagine that cosmopolitanism, hybridity and its associated practices would serve to debilitate the nation-state is to ignore the complex imperatives of globalization and to reduce its manifold activities to one sphere. Amarasekera is suggesting that despite all forces making for cosmopolitanism and hybridization, the experience of culture in modern societies is still shaped largely by the imaginaries and compulsions of the nation. The image of the nation is undoubtedly undergoing transformations as a consequence of the impact of global capitalism. However, the idea of the nation is still very much alive displaying a remarkable resilience, and continues to constitute the inescapable reference point for cultural analysis. This is an important suggestion contained in ‘Nosevuna Kadapatha.’ The kind of universality that is privileged by the cosmopolitans, according to Amarasekera is vacuous, and amounts to a mere a re-centering of the European discourse. The eminent African novelist Chinua Achebe once remarked, ‘The word universal should be banned altogether from discussion of African literature until such time as people cease to use it as a synonym for the narrow, self-serving parochialism of Europe.’
The other concept that I wish to allude to is that of the knowable community formulated by Raymond Williams. Amarasekera does not specifically use this term. However, the trajectory of his arguments leads in that direction. What Amarasekera is focusing on is the problematic of fictional representation within a realistic framework and how the reality of culture needs to be construed as a space of vital and dialectically generated meaning. Williams makes use of this concept of a knowable community as a way of demonstrating the interconnections between individual lives and the movement of history and the social and political and cultural forces that inflect human life. It is a way of defining social reality through fiction. Williams’ analysis of the fiction of Thomas Hardy and Charles Dickens bears this out. If one examines carefully Gunadasa Amarasekera’s argument, one would realize that he is emphasizing the same set of concerns that Williams articulated through his concept of the knowable community – to dramatize the linkages between individuals, collectivities and the underlying structures of history through a poetics of realism.
The conceptual architecture of ‘Nosevuna Kadapatha’ consists of a set of intersecting circles, one dealing with the decline of the Sinhala novel and the other with the regression of the Western or global novel. The interactions between these circles of commentary are central to the thesis of his book. Amarasekera’s observations on the Western novel are as astute as his comments on the Sinhala novel. He points out with increasing clarity how as a consequence of ignoring the best insights of theorists of realism such as Lukacs and critics like Watts, and moving away from the discourse of realism, the Western novel has lost contact with a vital source of nurturance and ended up in a cul-de-sac. His urgent plea is to rediscover and re-possess realism as a way of infusing a newer dynamism to fiction and connecting it with the deeper and structures of history.
Throughout his book Amarasekera comments on philosophers such as Descartes, Hume, Rousseau and Voltaire, novelists such as Tolstoy, Fluabert, Balzac, Lawrence, Camus, Kundera and critics and theorists such as Georg Lukacs, Ian Watt, Geroge Steiner, Edmund Wilson, Walter Benjamin, Graham Hough. His emphases on the reductionisms of Kundera, the moral fabulation in Leonard Woolf’s ‘The Village in the Jungle’, the ambivalences of judgment of Steiner and Wilson, the exposition of the rise of the Russian novel are comparable to the most insightful observations of Western critics. In this book, the author displays a deep and profoundly insightful understanding of Western literature This sharpness of apprehension and his symptomatic readings of Western works arise out of an intimate and invigorating engagement with Western literature. His discussions of Western philosophical and literary writings are important to the central argument he is making about the decline of the modern Sinhala novel.
‘Nosevuna Kadapatha’ is a timely plea for a collective self-reflection on the enfeeblement of the Sinhala novel as well as the decline of the global novel. It is indeed an invitation to undertake a literary-critical task of paramount importance and urgency. His sensitivity to geographical notations, complexities of history and the re-inventions of locality invest his analysis with a great depth of meaning. The state of the Sinhala novel is deeply depressing; however, everything is not lost. By re-occupying the abandoned space of realism and exploring the lost possibilities of the novel, making important connections with social formations and structure of history, we can rejuvenate it. In that sense, Amarasekera’s is a redemptive critique. His acuity of critical vision and interpretive audacity are as impressive as well as his unmatched gifts for memorable phrase-making that is in ample evidence in this work. ’Nosevuna Kadapatha’ should be required reading foe everyone interested in the novel in general and the Sinhala novel in particular. What this book clearly demonstrates is that the best literary criticism is at the same time best cultural criticism. - Sri Lanka Guardian
(December 10, Colombo, Sri Lanka Guardian) Gunadasa Amarasekera’s latest book of criticism, Nosevuna Kadapatha (Unused Mirror) proposes a timely re-assessment of the Sinhala novel, which he sees as being on a steady path of decline. In this book, which is written with verve, erudition, sardonic humour and a sense of urgency, Amarasekera invites the reader to reflect on the plight of the Sinhala novel and the norms and categories by which we choose to evaluate it. Here we find a superior cultural critic at the summit of his powers mapping the terrain of modern Sinhala fiction with brilliant insights. Nosevuna Kadapatha is a splendidly eloquent commentary on the state of the novel, both local and global, and as the author points out, there are interesting interconnections between the two.
The dominant trope subtending Gunadasa Amarasekera’s analysis of the modern Sinhala novel is that of the mirror – mirror as promoting social reflection as well as self-definition. The author starts out with a troubling conundrum. While we boast of high literacy and the population has increased steadily, the readership for fiction has declined palpably. While Piyadasa Sirisena’s novels sold in large numbers and Martin Wickremasinghe’s fiction appealed to an equally significant number of readers, more recent novels barely sell over a thousand copies. Amarasekera begins his analysis by pondering this situation. This is not merely a question of popularity; more importantly, this calls attention to the nature of critical culture that we inhabit.
In diagnosing this disconcerting predicament, Gunadasa Amarasekera focuses on two overlapping reasons. The first is that the novel has ceased to display any vital connection with the important social issues of the time and reflections on them. Piyadasa Sirisena, despite his numerous artistic shortcomings, fashioned the novel into an important vehicle of social commentary. Martin Wickremasinghe continued this line of thinking while avoiding the artistic deficiencies that marred Sirisena’s fiction. According to Gunadasa Amarasekera what is unsettling about the modern Sinhala is that it has ceased to cultivate that vital connection between fiction and sociality.
In a book currently in the press and expected to be released shortly titled Modern Sinhala Novel and the Public Sphere: Three Illustrative Moments’, I advance a similar argument. In this book, I have selected for analysis the novels of Piyadasa Sirisena, the trilogy of Martin Wickremasinghe and the heptology of Gunadasa Amarasekera to illustrate the complex ways in which these works played a vital role in the local public sphere, instigating important social discussions. Some decades ago, Amarasekera, in his critical writings, underlined the need to promote an elevated conversation regarding literature and social experience. Unfortunately, this never materialized and the consequences are here for all of us to see. The elevated conversation that Gunadasa Amarasekera focuses on relates closely to the social scientific trope of the Habermasian public sphere that I invoke in my book.
The second reason is the non-emergence of a vigorous and wholesome tradition of literary criticism in Sinhala. Ediriweera Sarachchandra, in his pioneering work Modern Sinhala Fiction, which was first written in English, laid the foundation for Sinhala fictional analysis. He discussed the works of early novelists such as A. Simon de Silva, Piyadasa Sirisena, Martin Wickremasinghe, and W. A. Silva, and pointed out how the novels of Wickremasinghe were superior to the works of the others. In order to enforce his judgment, he utilized three norms of analysis, realism in the sense of credibility, psychological complexity of the characters and the formal coherence and consistency. These were indeed adequate for the job at hand. The second important critic of modern Sinhala fiction was Martin Wickremasinghe. His criticism, like that of many creative writers of distinction ( T. S. Eliot is an obvious example) was an extension, and rationalization of his creative pursuits. Wickremasinghe took the novel to be a cultural text that inscribed the social and cultural forces at play in society. The sense of cultural authenticity was central to his mode of evaluation. The third important critic of Sinhala fiction, as demonstrated in this book, is Gunadasa Amarasekera. In his earlier essays, as well as in Nosevuna Kadapatha, he has gone beyond his two predecessors to locate the novel in a space of cultural interplay both local and global. He has sought to extend some of Wickremasinghe’s preoccupations by infusing them with a greater measure of social and political analysis, paying closer attention to global discursive influences and concomitant local social formations.
The problem with Sinhala fiction criticism is the absence of a vigorous tradition. The Peradeniya school under the stewardship Ediriweera Sarachchandra was expected to pave the way, but as Gunadasa Amarasekera points out, the bilingual intelligentsia that it produced was swept off its feet by the desire for imitation of Western models inadequately comprehended. The newer universities fared far worse. And during the past two decades or so, it is apparent that Sinhala literary criticism has dwindled into a pathetic spectacle of mud-slinging and ad hominem attacks, undermining the power and the validity of literary creation. The generality of the readership lost contact with world literature, and there were a few who resorted to name-dropping and sterile imitation of Western forms without any serious understanding of their strengths, weaknesses and relevance to the local context Amarasekera is suggesting that the desire for imitation that marked the Peradeniya school has now reached epidemic proportions in the absence of any countervailing critical powers. This passion for imitation, it seems to me, derives from an undialectical understanding of modernity. It is this sorry state of affairs that Amarasekera is seeking to rectify by calling attention to some important wellsprings of inspiration. In this regard, his focus on literary critics such as Ian Watt and George Lukacs who are now considered old-fashioned and passé merit serious re-evaluation. Ian Watt’s focus on realism and the novel form, the reading public and fiction, and Lukacs’ exposition of the concept of realism are highly significant.
There is a complex argument that runs through the pages of Gunadasa Amarasekera’s new book of criticism. If the reader is prepared to stay with the curve of his thought he or she would be amply rewarded with insight and wisdom. It is vitally connected to the concept of realism and the productive ways in which it has to be re-imagined. Sarachchandra took an important step in pressing this concept into service; however, as Amarasekera rightly points out, he had a narrow vision of it; he equated it with credibility which is of course one aspect of it. In this book, Amarasekera has sought to move beyond this constrictive approach and claim a large territory of operation for this concept. In order to understand the true significance of his move, we need to focus on the formulations of Georg Lukacs. Lukacs is, in many ways, the guiding spirit in this book as well as in Amarasekera’s heptology of novels beginning with ‘Gamanaka Mula.’
It is indeed the considered judgment of most discerning literary scholars and critics that the Hungarian thinker Georg Lukacs is one of the greatest and most perceptive Marxist thinkers of the twentieth century. For example, two of the most highly regarded literary scholars, Fredric Jameson and Terry Eagleton, single him out as the most distinguished Marxist critic of modern times. His views have played an important role in Amarasekera’s thinking. This is, of course, not to suggest that Amarasekera has absorbed Lukacs’ views indiscriminately; what he has done is to engage those views critically. Let us, for example, consider the notion of reflection that is central to both Lukacs and Amarasekera’s formulations. That the novel is a reflection of society is a belief that is widespread among scholars and critics alike. However, Lukacs glosses this idea in a way that bears the imprint of his distinctive way of theorizing questions of literature, history an social formation.. It is indeed his firm view that to reflect society is not merely to catch the outward appearances; it is, rather, to penetrate to the deeper layers of social existence. It is because of this conviction that Lukacs holds in such low esteem the naturalists writings of a novelist like Emile Zola.
Gunadasa Amarasekera’s approach to the concept of realism, as delineated in Nosevuna Kadapatha is similar; he focuses on the inner workings of society. Both Lukacs and Amarasekera call attention to the importance of a deeply informing historical consciousness in this effort. What is lacking in many of the Sinhala novels published in recent times, as well as critical writings, is this guiding historical consciousness. In his book of criticism Gunadasa Amarasekera has focused in a productive way on the intersecting concepts of reflection, realism and historical consciousness as a way of making the Sinhala novel a vital adjunct of the local public sphere and promoting the higher conversation among intellectuals that he ardently longs for.
The concept of realism is at the centre of Amarasekera’s argument in his new book. It is also a concept that is central to Lukacs’ conceptualizations. It is closely related to the idea of mirroring and both emanate from his approach to the understanding of societies on the move. It is no exaggeration to state that there is no other analyst who has explored the meaning of realism with the comprehension and nuanced understanding than Lukacs. It is vitally connected to his epistemology. While Gunadasa Amarasekera’s thinking shows great similarities to that of Lukacs, it is important to point out that Amarasekera is aiming to go beyond Lukacs; he is gesturing towards a moral realism, a complex moral engagement with the dynamics of social existence in a way that Lukacs does not. This is clearly evident in Nosevuna Kadapatha.
There are a number of other concepts that Amarasekera calls attention to in his book. In the interests of space, let me focus on two others. The idea of cosmopolitanism has surfaced in a compellingly powerful way in recent cultural criticism. The stock of this concept has risen sharply in the international marketplace of ideas. Cosmopolitanism is being valorized as signifying a new mode of imagination, a novel from of freedom. It focuses on trans-local and fluid subject-positions and the increasing globalization of capital and modalities of migrancies. The loss of cultural anchorage promoted by cosmopolitanism takes on an aura of self-validation, and the metropolitan novelist has become the official scribe celebrating this event. This concept seems to have found favor among some Sinhala writers as well. It is also one that informs deeply the discourse of what Amarsekera terms the global novel. Amarsekera, however, points to the counter-productive nature of this concept.
The idea of hybridity goes hand in hand with cosmopolitanism. What Gunadasa Amarasekera is seeking to point out is that to imagine that cosmopolitanism, hybridity and its associated practices would serve to debilitate the nation-state is to ignore the complex imperatives of globalization and to reduce its manifold activities to one sphere. Amarasekera is suggesting that despite all forces making for cosmopolitanism and hybridization, the experience of culture in modern societies is still shaped largely by the imaginaries and compulsions of the nation. The image of the nation is undoubtedly undergoing transformations as a consequence of the impact of global capitalism. However, the idea of the nation is still very much alive displaying a remarkable resilience, and continues to constitute the inescapable reference point for cultural analysis. This is an important suggestion contained in ‘Nosevuna Kadapatha.’ The kind of universality that is privileged by the cosmopolitans, according to Amarasekera is vacuous, and amounts to a mere a re-centering of the European discourse. The eminent African novelist Chinua Achebe once remarked, ‘The word universal should be banned altogether from discussion of African literature until such time as people cease to use it as a synonym for the narrow, self-serving parochialism of Europe.’
The other concept that I wish to allude to is that of the knowable community formulated by Raymond Williams. Amarasekera does not specifically use this term. However, the trajectory of his arguments leads in that direction. What Amarasekera is focusing on is the problematic of fictional representation within a realistic framework and how the reality of culture needs to be construed as a space of vital and dialectically generated meaning. Williams makes use of this concept of a knowable community as a way of demonstrating the interconnections between individual lives and the movement of history and the social and political and cultural forces that inflect human life. It is a way of defining social reality through fiction. Williams’ analysis of the fiction of Thomas Hardy and Charles Dickens bears this out. If one examines carefully Gunadasa Amarasekera’s argument, one would realize that he is emphasizing the same set of concerns that Williams articulated through his concept of the knowable community – to dramatize the linkages between individuals, collectivities and the underlying structures of history through a poetics of realism.
The conceptual architecture of ‘Nosevuna Kadapatha’ consists of a set of intersecting circles, one dealing with the decline of the Sinhala novel and the other with the regression of the Western or global novel. The interactions between these circles of commentary are central to the thesis of his book. Amarasekera’s observations on the Western novel are as astute as his comments on the Sinhala novel. He points out with increasing clarity how as a consequence of ignoring the best insights of theorists of realism such as Lukacs and critics like Watts, and moving away from the discourse of realism, the Western novel has lost contact with a vital source of nurturance and ended up in a cul-de-sac. His urgent plea is to rediscover and re-possess realism as a way of infusing a newer dynamism to fiction and connecting it with the deeper and structures of history.
Throughout his book Amarasekera comments on philosophers such as Descartes, Hume, Rousseau and Voltaire, novelists such as Tolstoy, Fluabert, Balzac, Lawrence, Camus, Kundera and critics and theorists such as Georg Lukacs, Ian Watt, Geroge Steiner, Edmund Wilson, Walter Benjamin, Graham Hough. His emphases on the reductionisms of Kundera, the moral fabulation in Leonard Woolf’s ‘The Village in the Jungle’, the ambivalences of judgment of Steiner and Wilson, the exposition of the rise of the Russian novel are comparable to the most insightful observations of Western critics. In this book, the author displays a deep and profoundly insightful understanding of Western literature This sharpness of apprehension and his symptomatic readings of Western works arise out of an intimate and invigorating engagement with Western literature. His discussions of Western philosophical and literary writings are important to the central argument he is making about the decline of the modern Sinhala novel.
‘Nosevuna Kadapatha’ is a timely plea for a collective self-reflection on the enfeeblement of the Sinhala novel as well as the decline of the global novel. It is indeed an invitation to undertake a literary-critical task of paramount importance and urgency. His sensitivity to geographical notations, complexities of history and the re-inventions of locality invest his analysis with a great depth of meaning. The state of the Sinhala novel is deeply depressing; however, everything is not lost. By re-occupying the abandoned space of realism and exploring the lost possibilities of the novel, making important connections with social formations and structure of history, we can rejuvenate it. In that sense, Amarasekera’s is a redemptive critique. His acuity of critical vision and interpretive audacity are as impressive as well as his unmatched gifts for memorable phrase-making that is in ample evidence in this work. ’Nosevuna Kadapatha’ should be required reading foe everyone interested in the novel in general and the Sinhala novel in particular. What this book clearly demonstrates is that the best literary criticism is at the same time best cultural criticism. - Sri Lanka Guardian
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