Colpetty People (R/J)

In this extraordinary debut Ashok Ferry chronicles in a gently probing voice the journeys of characters seeking something beyond the barriers of nations and generations. His tales of social-climbing Sri Lankans of the pathos of immigration of rich people with poor taste of ice-cream karma of innocent love eternity and more take us to Colombo’s nouveau riche hoity-toity returnees ladies with buttery skin and square fingernails old-fashioned aristocrats and the poor mortals trapped between them. Ferry’s stories comprise characters that are ‘serious and fine and upstanding and infinitely dull’ but also others like young John-John who loses his childhood somewhere ‘high up in the air between Asmara and Rome’ the maid Agnes of God whose mango-sucking teeth ‘fly out at you like bats out of the mouth of a cave’ Ashoka the immigrant who embodies his Sri Lankan identity only on the bus ride between home and work and Professor Jayaweera who finds sterile freedoms caged in the ‘unbending straight lines of Western Justice’. Absurd sad scathing and generous but mostly wickedly funny Colpetty People presents modern Sri Lankans as they navigate worlds between Ceylon and the West.