Tuesday 11 July, 2006

Reading The Corrections

When I was in Sri Lanka last year (thank you Asialink) I wrote the following article:

'Reading sticks better when you're traveling, I find. The articles you read, the novels you devour, are somehow more vivid, details imprint themselves and, if you are lying in the heat of a Colombo guest house, with a fan turning lazily, shifting the hot air from one side of the room to the other, you find you laugh out loud at Michael Ondaatje's observation that, 'Most of the events in the erotic literature of Asia. . . must take place in the mountains, for sex is almost impossible in Colombo except in the early morning hours.' Not surprisingly it is Ondaatje that I want to re-read first, since I am traveling in the country where he was born. I go to a bookshop looking for his books - surely he must be a hero in his home land? Perhaps, though the bookshops I go to try to offer me the English language writers they do stock. 'Danielle Steele,' one helpful proprietor suggests. I shake my head so he gives it another shot: 'John Grisham?' I finally find Ondaatje's memoir, Running in the Family at Barefoot, a gallery, cafe, textile and book store which is a haven for tourists and well-to-do Sri Lankans. I also ask for Anil's Ghost, his most recent novel about Sri Lanka's recent political turmoil, but they have sold out.'

You can get the full piece (all 3000 words of it) here. I submitted it the Age and Australian Book Review and they both knocked it back. But I like it, so here it is.

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