chasing bawa

can be found here. As you all probably know, I was very impressed with V.V. Ganeshananthan‘s debut novel Love Marriage and always keep an attentive eye out for any new offerings from an author that I admire.

Hippocrates, published in Granta 109, is a short story set in Sri Lanka about a Tamil woman recently down from Jaffna to Colombo with a complicated past. Ganeshananthan’s unveiling of the protagonist’s past is masterful and beautifully written. I particularly love the way her characters aren’t simply stereotyped nor her world white-washed. They are difficult, knotted and very human. Ganeshananthan is an American of Sri Lankan origin and writes unsentimentally of her parents’ country.

In the coming years, I think we can expect a slew of post-war Sri Lankan fiction from writers in Sri Lanka and the diaspora tackling the ethnic conflict as people slowly try to recover and understand what has been happening and what has been kept hidden during the war. And I hope Ganeshananthan continues to write about complex and difficult issues.

Hippocrates is a quietly resonant story that will linger in your mind long after it is finished. You won’t regret reading it.