Synopsis
It is New Year's Eve, 1982, and the whole gang is at Victor and Nandini's house. The Godfather is on repeat upstairs. Baila music is blaring from the record player in the lounge. Poppadoms are frying in the kitchen. And Preethi, tipsy on youth and friendship and covert cigarettes out the window, just wants to belong.
But what does that mean, to belong? Is it: paying over the odds for a bottle of whisky? Getting lost with your impassive grandmother on the way home from school? Mourning for Elvis? Adopting a child whose skin is darker than yours? Marrying an English boy? Learning how to speak in a voice that doesn't remind you of your father? Feeling awkward at an office barn dance? Losing your lover, twice? Vowing to destroy the world and then changing your mind?
Is it something else, just out of reach?
From that New Year's party to a family funeral, via ghetto blasters and growing pains, through 7/7 and the world according to Charlie Chaplin, life in all of its complexity happens to Preethi, Nil, Lolly, Rohan, and their tightly knotted Sri Lankan families in south London. Tracing the fine lines of politics, tradition and community, Roshi Fernando's stunning collection of linked stories pulls us back, back, to the knowledge of home.
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About the Author
Roshi Fernando was born in London of Sri Lankan parents. She has a PhD in Creative Writing from the University of Swansea. She won the 2009 Impress Prize for New Writers, was shortlisted for the 2011 Sunday Times EFG Private Bank Award, longlisted for the 2011 Frank O'Connor International Short Story Prize, was given a special commendation by the judges of the Manchester Fiction Prize and was longlisted for the Bridport prize and the Fish prize. Roshi Fernando lives in Gloucestershire with her husband and four children.
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Homesick
Published by
Bloomsbury Publishing PLC, 2012
ISBN 10: 1408826364
ISBN 13: 9781408826362
Used
Paperback
Seller: Barclay Books, York, WA, Australia
Seller rating 5 out of 5 stars
Paperback. Export ed. A stunning work of fiction about contemporary immigrant life from a dazzling new writer. It's New Year's Eve 1982. At Victor and Nandini's home, family and friends gather to celebrate. Whiskey and arrack have been poured, poppadoms are freshly fried, and baila music is on the stereo. In the middle of it all is sixteen-year old Preethi, tipsy on youth, friendship, and pilfered wine, desperate to belong. Moving back and forth in time, between London and Sri Lanka, and circling the people in Preethi's world, Homesick is a poignant narrative that blends love with loss, politics with pop culture, and tradition with rebellion. 2012. First edition, first printing. A fine, unmarked copy that presents as new. Seller Inventory # 5974480