Sri Lankan novelist Nihal de Silva died before he could finish his last novel, Arathi.
Sri Lankan novelist and avid naturalist Nihal de Silva was killed tragically in a landmine explosion in 2006 in Wilpattu National Park. His first novel The Road from Elephant Pass won the Gratiean Award instituted by Sri Lanka-born novelist Michael Ondaatje) in 2003. De Silva also won the state literary award “for writing courageously about political parasites and their terminal torture of a nation and its helpless masses”.
The plot
His last book Arathi, launched at the London Book Fair in April, is dedicated “to the poor in Sri Lanka marginalised and suffering, on whose behalf so many have done…. so little...”
With a powerful and disconcerting first-person narrative, Arathi tells a gripping story of arms dealers, betrayals, murder and terrorism. Jehan Yatawara, a young executive in an advertising agency Target, acquires a second-hand IBM ThinkPad. Jehan runs into a mysterious programme “Thiara” and struggles to find a password to unravel it. When he finds it, Jehan is shocked by the entries made by the previous owner.
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