Wolfson welcomes leading South Asian writers

Each has given a fascinating talk addressing a wide variety of issues, from insights into the minutiae of everyday life as a novelist to the move away from post-colonial obsessions.

The first talk in the series was given on Thursday 8 May by Romesh Gunesekera, the Sri-Lankan born author of many titles including Reef, which was shortlisted for the Booker Prize in 1994. Gunesekera identified four major challenges that will affect South Asian writers in the coming years: the questioning of boundaries, geographical and mental; the importance of reflecting the truth of how we live now; secularisation and the resistance of forces that can narrow the mind; and the commercialisation of thought. The audience was also treated to a reading from his new book Noontide Toll, variously described as a novel and as a collection of short stories, which recounts interactions between a Sri Lankan taxi driver and his passengers.

The following week, over 200 Wolfson members and friends were present at a conversation between Michael Ondaatje and Wolfson's President, Professor Dame Hermione Lee. Ondaatje, author of Booker-Prize winning The English Patient, was an engaging participant, and read a number of excerpts, including two from his most recent book The Cat's Table. The conversation centred on themes that recurred throughout the four events: the sense of place evident in all of the writers' works, and the conflicts in identity associated with writers treading the line between East and West. Ondaatje also spoke in depth about the influence non-literary art forms have on his writing, detailing how he turns to opera or ballet when stuck rather than other writers.

Kamila Shamsie's talk on the 20 May shone a light onto the difficult, long, and emotional road that writers must traverse in the creation of a novel. Named one of the Granta Young Writers of the year in 2013, Shamsie spoke rivetingly about the research that had fed into her most recent book A God in Every Stone and brought out some of the conflicts between an author's personal morality and the desire for a good story. The book deals with a massacre perpetrated by the British army in Peshawar in 1930. This massacre is largely unstudied by historians and not widely talked about in Pakistan or India, but Shamsie discovered a shameful collaboration between Muslim leaders and the British generals to remove the bodies of the dead. Shamsie discussed the difficult line between story and truth in historical fiction, and explained that due to the nature of the event she felt a duty to get the facts right.

Finally, last Thursday world-renowned mother and daughter authors, Anita and Kiran Desai spoke with Professor Dame Lee about their careers and relationship. Three-times Booker nominated writer Anita Desai spoke about the changes India has gone through since her childhood, and how she is unable to write about the modern-day sub-continent as she cannot relate to it in any way. Although setting her books in earlier periods, she flees from nostalgia, which Lee suggested includes a ‘fierce satire' about ignorant visitors to the county. Kiran Desai, author of 2006 Booker winning The Inheritance of Loss, spoke about the challenges Indian writers abroad face, particularly in the loss of a traditional Indian style of writing. She suggested that writers in the diaspora were writing more simply and moving away from the richer, non-temporal, larger characteristics of older writing.

Continuing the theme of post-colonial authors and literature addressed in these talks, Wolfson is delighted to be welcoming J.M. Coetzee, the Nobel-prize winning South African novelist, to the College next Thursday. He will be giving a public reading on the 12^th June, and tickets are available through the University Stores website. A colloquium on his writing will take place the next day; further details are available on the event webpage.