The 30th Gratiaen Prize - Report and Winner Citations
REPORT ON GRATIAEN PRIZE 2023
by Romesh Gunesekera
It is an honour and a privilege for me to be here for the Gratiaen Prize with my fellow judges. My thanks to the Trust for inviting and allowing me this wonderful opportunity to be so closely connected to the literary life of my home country. My thanks too to my fellow judges: Sukanya Wignaraja and Dr Kaushalya Perera. We come from very different backgrounds, but we all share a belief in the value of books, reading and good writing. We have had such wonderful illuminating conversations. And I would like to thank them for the spirit in which they engaged in this. I would also like to thank you all for being here, supporting Sri Lankan writing, and thank you writers, authors, for doing what you do and giving us the things we need — stories, poems, drama.
High Commissioner, Trustees, guests, readers and writers, I am glad to report that creative writing in Sri Lanka, in English, is not just alive and well but thriving. Full of energy and imagination despite these difficult times, the ‘interesting times’ we live in. Living in interesting sometimes can be good for artists. But for writers living in interesting times can be more of a curse. What you want as a writer is to be left alone to find the shape of the story, or the poem that is niggling you. When momentous things happen — socially, politically, in the economy or the environment — the intrusion is a problem. You feel you must take it into account, or do something with it, but it is difficult when you don’t know the shape of things to come. You have your own story. The last thing you want is to be pushed and pulled by rest of the world however important it might be. Believe me, I know. I’ve had to grapple with it for thirty years. So, I commend the writers who keep writing despite all the things that are going on around them, and especially those who can find something meaningful despite the mayhem around and are able to make us feel that to read and to write is the right thing to do. Sometimes even find a way of understanding, or handling, the events and difficulties of today. It is not easy.
We three judges met for the first time on Zoom, the meeting place of our modern times, in January soon after we received our boxes of submissions, unsure of what they held and how we fulfil our duty to celebrate the best of creative writing in English in Sri Lanka. How does one choose between a book of poems and a novel, or a collection of stories? Can you say the mango is in some way more worthy of celebrating than the mangosteen or the pineapple. It turns out we can say one is riper, more perfectly achieved, sweeter, or nourishing, closer to perfection than the other.
We met several times on-line and discovered, despite our different backgrounds, our choices converged. We were all impressed by the same books. Those that demonstrated a control over language and attention to craft. Those that were distinctive and gripped us. And ultimately had some meaning for us. Books that spoke to us, told us something about the world we live in, imaginatively or physically, and books that we felt were important and deserved a wider readership.
The range of entries included children’s fiction, drama, fantasy, romance, crime and poetry. The authors were diverse, it seemed, as far as we could tell but I hope in years to come the prize will attract an even wider range of authors from all over the country. There are aspiring writers everywhere in Sri Lanka, choosing their craft, their language and their time. I hope they will be encouraged. In the thirty years I have been publishing books, I’ve seen the world of writing here grew and blossom. Sri Lanka is becoming known for its writers. And so it should. The roll call is pretty good.
As it turns out, on the shortlist this year we have two works of fiction and two of poetry. These are books we think all you readers out there, who want to know what is happening with creative writing in English in Sri Lanka, should read. They are very different ranging from the personal to the futuristic.
To choose a winner, one above the rest, was difficult. We were unanimous in our choices for the long list and the short list. We were also unanimous in arriving at our final decision. It seems we had discovered a treasure chest, not a box of fruit. And the treasure was a like a gold coin with two faces. Each amazing in its own way. And so, in the spirit of the times, where we want to celebrate more than one story of our times, where one is not enough, we declare not one but two winners for the 2023 Gratiaen Prize, Two winners that shows the range of Sri Lankan writing in English. They show how you can write in Sri Lanka and about Sri Lanka in radically different ways.
The winners are:
The subtle and delicate collection — Keeping Time by Chiranthi Rajapakse and the urgent, sharp, rollercoaster — The Wretched and the Damned by Yudhanjaya Wijeratne.
Congratulations to both of you and thank you, and all the other writers on the short list and the long list, for your books and your imagination. In this world, which is so hard to trust, not just because of AI or no-I, we need you.
Winner Citations
Keeping Time and Other Stories – Chiranthi Rajapakse
This book of short stories gave us glimpses of contemporary life that stayed with us and grew stronger with every reading. Skilfully crafted, the stories capture the richness and depth of everyday lives, and invite the reader to reflect on the complexities of deceptively ordinary experiences.
The Wretched and the Damned - Yudhanjaya Wijeratne
A bold challenge and a book of the times, reflecting the upheavals of Sri Lanka’s immediate past and present. It brings a set of fantastic heroes to the Sri Lankan landscape, and deals with possible futures, impossible solutions and urgently paced action.