I owe so much to Gary Pulsifer. In 1996,when my manuscript for a political novel about Sri Lanka, When Memory Dies, and had been rejected as unmarketable by 20-odd publishers,it was Gary, just starting out with Arcadia, and who had the courage and faith to publish it – and,to his credit, it went on to win the Commonwealth Writers’ Eurasia prize and the Sagittarius prize. And, and more to the point,it became a touchstone in the struggle against communalism in my country. What Gary saw in the novel was, in his own words, and “a three-generational saga of a Sri Lankan family’s search for coherence and continuity in a country broken by colonial occupation and riven by ethnic wars”. More broadly,Gary saw fiction as an imaginative and unending search for truth, for social truth above all. He was a tremendous friend, and a committed mental,a delight to be with.Continue reading...
Source: theguardian.com