SUNCATCHER: Shortlisted for the Jhalak Prize 2020 - Tapa blanda

One of the most delicate contemporary handlers of English prose * Spectator * A master storyteller * The New York Times * Gunesekera conjures strange and wonderful images and writes with a wonderful deftness * Financial Times * Gunesekera writes in sentences prickling with irony, with humane appeal and masterly finesse * Sunday Times * Gunesekera is an exceptionally poised and potent craftsman -- Pico Iyer * Wall Street Journal * Humane warmth and bitter irony combine as Gunesekera surveys traumatised survivors, returned exiles, aid workers, shame-stricken army personal and opportunistic foreign visitors * Sunday Times, Books of the Year * Gunesekera's lush descriptions make you see and smell the island and feel its hot, damp air on your skin * Spectator * A terrific read: pacy, political, moral, atmospheric and yes, definitely romantic ... Gunesekera's exquisite prose awakens all the senses -- Yasmin Alibhai-Brown * Independent * Gunesekera is strikingly adept at delineating the landscape of rootlessness ... [He] has a gentle, generous, deceptively light touch * Sunday Times * Gunesekera's mellifluous prose alone is worth the price of admission. His description here of a first kiss has surely never been bettered * Daily Mail * Gunesekera's storytelling is languorous, atmospheric, imagistic * Guardian * Gunesekera's language has a simple surface - but the simplicity is deceptive; his observation is as close as the stare of a voyeur * Independent * Gunesekera is quite simply a very good, often inspiring lyric writer who feels as deeply as he sees * Irish Times * Full of the uncertain sadness of exiles and dreamers Gunesekera's characters become memorable emblems of solitude and despair * Vogue *

Ceylon is on the brink of change. But Kairo is at a loose end. School is closed, the government is in disarray, the press is under threat and the religious right are flexing their muscles. Kairo's hard-working mother blows off steam at her cha-cha-cha classes; his Trotskyite father grumbles over the state of the nation between his secret flutters on horseraces in faraway England. All Kairo wants to do is hide in his room and flick over second-hand westerns and superhero comics, or escape on his bicycle and daydream. Then he meets the magnetic teenage Jay, and his whole world is turned inside out. A budding naturalist and a born rebel, Jay keeps fish and traps birds for an aviary he is building in the garden of his grand home. The adults in Jay's life have no say in what he does or where he goes: he holds his beautiful, fragile mother in contempt, and his wealthy father seems fuelled by anger. But his Uncle Elvin, suave and worldly, is his encourager. As Jay guides him from the realm of make believe into one of hunting-guns and fast cars and introduces him to a girl - Niromi - Kairo begins to understand the price of privilege and embarks on a journey of devastating consequence. Taut and luminous, graceful and wild, Suncatcher is a poignant coming-of-age novel about difficult friendships and sudden awakenings. Mesmerizingly it charts the loss of innocence and our recurring search for love - or consolation - bringing these extraordinary lives into our own.