The Good Little Ceylonese Girl

Our Sri Lankan narrator visits his friend Joe in Italy where Joe attends a special course-in higher (or shall we say lower) studies in women. Italians-much like Sri Lankans-live at home through marriage death and sometimes even beyond the pale. An accompanying string of fake fiancés and phoney engagements are the backdrop to this delightful collection of darkly humorous tales about Sri Lankans at home and abroad. Long years and many miles away Colombo’s Father Cruz attempts to rescue a church from parishioners who like to put their donations where others can see them-on large plaques on the coast a retired Admiral escapes the tsunami on an antique Dutch cabinet two childhood sweethearts in time-honoured Sri Lankan tradition are married off to strangers. Ashok Ferrey wrIts about Sri Lanka and its people wherever they roam with remarkable acuity. He wrIts of the West’s effect on Sri Lankans of its ‘turning them into caricatures unmistakably genuine but not at all the real thing’. In The Good Little Ceylonese Girl his second collection of stories he shows us the reality beyond those feeble sketches in its full glory. About the Author Ashok Ferrey is the author of five works of fiction and Sri Lanka’s bestselling author in English.