In his fiction Romesh Gunesekera engages the reality of Sri Lankan immigrants to England, who must deal with separation from their country in the midst of ethnic violence, the consequences of postcolonial history, and their role in the complex cultural situation of the Asian diaspora. With the short-listing of his first novel, Reef (1994), for the Booker Prize in 1994, Gunesekera established himself as an important figure in the field of British Asian writing. The versatility of his narrative techniques and choices, his exploration of the immigrant experience, and his engagement with fundamental issues of meaning in the context of the Asian diaspora, have made Gunesekera's works an essential part of the discourse of immigration and ethnicity in Britain.

Romesh Gunesekera was born in Colombo, the capital of Sri Lanka (then Ceylon), on 26 February 1954, the second son of Douglas and Miriam Gunesekera. For the first years of his life, Gunesekera's...