Romesh Gunesekera
The Sandglass
Hailed as one of six most interesting books to watch in 1998 (Independent, London), The Sandglass is set in London and Sri Lanka.
It tells the story of two feuding families whose lives are interlinked by the changing fortunes of postcolonial Sri Lanka. Moving back and forth between two physical and temporal locales, the novel brings to life Prins Ducal and his search for answers about his family's past, including his father's rise to wealth, rivalry with the Vatunas family, and a suspicious death - a mystery that further unfolds upon Prins's arrival in London for his mother's funeral.
Weaving together themes of memory, exile, and postcolonial upheaval, The Sandglass is a book Marie Claire calls "utterly engaging. . . . A heady mix of 1990s London and postwar Sri Lanka."
Buy The Sandglass at amazon.co.uk
Buy The Sandglass at amazon.com
Reviews
Book of the Month, Marie Claire
Romantic, mysterious and laced with a sense of yearning...
...his novels are a roller-coaster ride, made utterly engaging by the strength of his characters
Marie ClaireGunesekera writes with enormous compassion and insight, a tenderness that is infectious and forgiving ... a songbird among authors....
Scotland on SundayRomesh Gunesekera takes his place at the forefront of hybrid modern chroniclers with the Sandglass
Image MagazineGunesekera has produced yet another beautifully written and closely observed book, a reprise of the form he showed in the 1994 Booker-shortlisted Reef.
Options....an amazing combination of a bleak and easy read..... the book slips on by you lightly, almost without effort.
Scotsman... a novel of true distinction, the work of a profoundly honest mind, one utterly unconcerned with th authorial self, intent instead on the lot of fellow humans and its meaning..
Independent on Sunday..a mature meditation on time and death. There is a desperate sadness to it, which is totally engrossing. It is a brave, beautiful novel, which confronts chaos with relaxed wit and elegance. Yes we are all doomed, but at least we live , as Romesh Gunesekera's characters will within me for a long time to come...
Sunday Telegraph.....a notable addition to a genre pioneered two generations ago by such writers as George Lamming and V S Naipaul......
Literary ReviewRomesh Gunesekera is a superb story-teller.....
Sunday TribuneElegaic, freighted with melancholy, The Sandglass paints a vivid portrait of a society in that recent past and in a frightening present, and leaves one wondering how this talented writer will deploy his imagination and his rich material in the future.
IndependentThis outstanding novel.......
Observer..an intricate and compelling narrative...
Chip is also telling his special story of the Vatunases and Ducals, taking it beyond romance, family saga and mystery thriller towards an indictment of the landowning and professional classes....
As much as its narrative structure and its characters, the moods and textures of Gunesekera's prose are intrinsic to his complex treatment of time...
....the Sri Lankan episodes are often Dickensian in their blend of comedy and menace, the English scenes are touched almost everywhere with lyricism and sensuousness...
...behind the narrative's deft and subtle interweavings of elaborate histories and fugitive memories, crashed dreams and still moments of promise, there lie strong echoes of Thomas Hardy's poetry with its delicate images of remembered pleasures and visions of despoiling loss.
Times Literary SupplementGunesekera writes about Sri Lanka in all his fiction, but it's easy to think of him as a novelist in the great English tradition- he writes about manners and secrets, about snobbery and social climbing, in an indirect and lightly ironic way. .......He is an author of great social delicacy, with a love of realistic description and a sly wit which can readily escape the casual reader.
....beautifully written prose,... deft way with characterisation and description, dialogue which is full of life, and buckets of charm.
... there is a great deal of page-by-page pleasure here, and no-one can doubt Gunesekera's accomplishment or elegance; the rhythm and colour of his prose is beyond reproach...
Mail on Sunday[Pearl's ] tales of the old days, of a ramshackle and unloved house called Arcadia, surrounded by the hostile territory of the wonderfully appalling Esra Vatunas, conjures a world of private obsession and driven, chaotic lives that can stand comparison with much of the best contemporary writing.
The Glasgow Herald...Monkfish Moon.... and... Reef ...indicated the arrival of talented, subtle writer. His third book confirms that promise.
Gunesekera has an exceptional ear for .... dialogue - and a lively sense of humour which he meshes seemlessly with a powerfully serious oblique "take" on the island's recent history.
The Sandglass....establishes Gunesekera's technical competence and creative vitality. His prose is chiselled and precise enough to register powerful emotion without lapsing into sentimentality. He writes movingly of human vulnerability and of the misfortunes and catastrophes that overwhelm individuals and nations.
India TodayThe writing ... has a Chekovian flavour about it. It is lucid, direct and economical.
The relationships between the various characters and the characters themselves are portrayed with a great sensitivity.
The Island (Sri Lanka)The Sandglass is dark yet funny, charming, smoothly written and seductive.
The Sunday Leader (Sri Lanka)This novel reaffirms Gunesekera's strengths in illuminating intimate truths through a minimal plot. Though it mirrors the torment of a country, its surprises lie in more profound, implosive revelations of bereavement, birth and love.
The GuardianFiction of the week ... Few novels are more obviously - and deservedly - destined for major success.
The Irish Times
