Book Description

The stories gathered in this volume display a literary imagination of high order wedded to a probing mind that should command our attention. A Sri Lankan-born black Australian visits Amsterdam only to be confronted by the ambivalence and complexities of his identity; a Sri Lankan family arrives in Perth, their new home, a newly arrived immigrant father, through the experiences of his daughter, faces up to the realities of racism; a husband is caught between the power of nostalgia and the material comforts of the present; a father and son go out looking for ice-cream as they encounter the inescapable ramifications of multiculturalism in Australia. It is through situations such as these that Sunil Govinnage has sought to focus attention and the desire to map the variable meanings of home and exile.