Philip Michael Ondaatje is a Sri Lankan-born Canadian poet, fiction writer, essayist, novelist, editor, and filmmaker. He is the recipient of multiple literary awards such as the Governor General's Award, the Giller Prize, the Booker Prize, and the Prix Médicis étranger. Ondaatje is also an Officer of the Order of Canada, recognizing him as one of Canada's most renowned living authors.
The Sri Lankan Civil War was a civil war fought in Sri Lanka from 1983 to 2009. Beginning on 23 July 1983, there was an intermittent insurgency against the government by the Velupillai Prabhakaran-led Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam. The LTTE fought to create an independent Tamil state called Tamil Eelam in the north-east of the island, due to the continuous discrimination and violent persecution against Sri Lankan Tamils by the Sinhalese dominated Sri Lankan Government.
The Baillie Gifford Prize for Non-Fiction, formerly the Samuel Johnson Prize, is an annual British book prize for the best non-fiction writing in the English language. It was founded in 1999 following the demise of the NCR Book Award. With its motto "All the best stories are true", the prize covers current affairs, history, politics, science, sport, travel, biography, autobiography and the arts. The competition is open to authors of any nationality whose work is published in the UK in English. The longlist, shortlist and winner is chosen by a panel of independent judges, which changes every year. Formerly named after English author and lexicographer Samuel Johnson, the award was renamed in 2015 after Baillie Gifford, an investment management firm and the primary sponsor. Since 2016, the annual dinner and awards ceremony has been sponsored by the Blavatnik Family Foundation.
Necklacing is a method of extrajudicial summary execution and torture carried out by forcing a rubber tire drenched with petrol around a victim's chest and arms, and setting it on fire. The term "necklace" originated in the 1980s in black townships of apartheid South Africa where suspected collaborators were publicly executed in this fashion.
Sir Philip Christopher Ondaatje, OC, CBE, FRSL is a Sri Lankan-born Canadian–English businessman, philanthropist, adventurer, writer and bob-sledding Olympian for Canada. Ondaatje is the older brother of the author Michael Ondaatje and lives in both Chester, Nova Scotia, and the United Kingdom.
Anil's Ghost is the critically acclaimed fourth novel by Michael Ondaatje. It was first published in 2000 by McClelland and Stewart.
Neelakandan Tiruchelvam, PC was a Sri Lankan Tamil lawyer, academic, human rights activist and politician. He was a Member of Parliament and Director of the International Centre for Ethnic Studies. He advocated for a peaceful resolution to the Sri Lankan Civil War and is considered one of the most influential researchers on constitutional law and constitutional theory in Sri Lanka.
The Royal Society of Literature Ondaatje Prize is an annual literary award given by the Royal Society of Literature. The £10,000 award is for a work of fiction, non-fiction or poetry that evokes the "spirit of a place", and is written by someone who is a citizen of or who has been resident in the Commonwealth or the Republic of Ireland.
National Hero is a status an individual can receive in Sri Lanka for those who are considered to have played a major role in fighting for the freedom of the country. The status is conferred by the President of Sri Lanka. The recipients of the award are celebrated on a Sri Lankan national holiday, National Heroes’ Day, held annually on 22 May. Every year, the President and general public pay tribute by observing a two minutes silence in their memory. The individuals are also celebrated on Sri Lanka Independence Day, held on 4 February. In this, the President or Prime Minister will typically address the nation with a speech honouring the National Heroes. The award has only been awarded to Sri Lankan citizens, but is not limited to this group.
William John Fiennes FRSL is an English author best known for his memoirs The Snow Geese (2002) and The Music Room (2009).
Jaffna is the capital city of the Northern Province of Sri Lanka. It is the administrative headquarters of the Jaffna District located on a peninsula of the same name. With a population of 88,138 in 2012, Jaffna is Sri Lanka's 12th most populous city. Jaffna is approximately six miles from Kandarodai which served as an emporium in the Jaffna peninsula from classical antiquity. Jaffna's suburb Nallur, served as the capital of the four-century-long medieval Jaffna Kingdom.
Aminatta Forna, OBE, is a Scottish and Sierra Leonean writer. She is the author of a memoir, The Devil That Danced on the Water: A Daughter's Quest, and four novels: Ancestor Stones (2006), The Memory of Love (2010), The Hired Man (2013) and Happiness (2018). Her novel The Memory of Love was awarded the Commonwealth Writers' Prize for "Best Book" in 2011, and was also shortlisted for the Orange Prize for Fiction. Forna is Professor of Creative Writing at Bath Spa University and was, until recently, Sterling Brown Distinguished Visiting professor at Williams College in Massachusetts. She is currently Director and Lannan Foundation Chair of Poetics of the Lannan Center for Poetics and Social Practice at Georgetown University.
Shehan Karunatilaka is a Sri Lankan writer most notable for his 2010 debut novel Chinaman: The Legend of Pradeep Mathew, which won the Commonwealth Prize, the DSC Prize, the Gratiaen Prize and was adjudged the second greatest cricket book of all time by Wisden. His novel The Seven Moons of Maali Almeida was included on the longlist and shortlist for the 2022 Booker Prize.
Tamil Tigress is a book by Niromi de Soyza, which tells the autobiographical story of a former child soldier of the Sri Lankan guerrilla army Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) and one of its first female fighters. This is the first narration of a Sri Lankan female guerrilla soldier to be published as a memoir in English. It was initially written as a diary while at boarding school after the author fled Sri Lanka. The author was inspired to rewrite the book for publication after seeing the negative reaction to those fleeing from the civil war in Sri Lanka.
With the Sri Lankan Civil War spanning nearly 30 years, (1983-2009), it has been portrayed in a wide range of ways in popular culture.
V. I. S. Jayapalan is a Sri Lankan-Tamil writer, political commentator and actor who has appeared in Tamil language films. He made his acting debut in Vetrimaaran's Aadukalam (2011) and won a National Film Award for his portrayal.
Samanth Subramanian is an Indian writer and journalist based in London. He studied journalism at Penn State University and international relations at Columbia University. In 2018–19, he was a Leon Levy Fellow at the City University of New York. He is also a regular contributor to The New Yorker, The New York Times, The Guardian and WIRED.
Anuk Arudpragasam is a Sri Lankan Tamil novelist writing in English and Tamil. His debut novel The Story of a Brief Marriage was published in 2016 by Flatiron Books/Granta Books and was subsequently translated into French, German, Czech, Mandarin, Dutch and Italian. The novel, which takes place in 2009 during the final stages of the Sri Lankan Civil War, won the DSC Prize for South Asian Literature, and was shortlisted for the Dylan Thomas Prize and the German Internationaler Literaturpreis. His second novel A Passage North was published in 2021 and was shortlisted for the Booker Prize.
Guy Gunaratne is a British journalist, filmmaker and novelist. Gunaratne identifies as non-binary and uses he/they/them pronouns.
A Passage North is a 2021 novel written by Anuk Arudpragasam. The novel is set in Sri Lanka following the end of the Civil War. It was first published on 13 July 2021 by Hogarth Press in the United States and by Hamish Hamilton in India. It was also published by Granta Books in the United Kingdom on 15 July 2021. It was shortlisted for the 2021 Booker Prize.
