This collection of short stories... display[s] a literary imagination of high order wedded to a probing mind that should command our attention. A Sri Lankan born black Australian visits Amsterdam only to be confronted by the ambivalences and complexities of his identity; a Sri Lankan family arrives in Perth, their new home, as what it is to be here is constantly and disconcertingly being juxtaposed in the narrator's mind with what it was to be there; a newly arrived immigrant father, through the experiences of his daughter, faces up to the realities of racism and the attractions of his new home; a husband is caught between the power of nostalgia and the material comforts of the present; a father and son go out looking for ice cream as they encounter the inescapable ramifications of multiculturality in Australia. It is through situations such as these that Sunil Govinnage has sought to focus attention on the complexities of diasporic existence and the desire to map the variable meanings of home and exile.
� Dr. Wimal Dissanayake, Senior Research Fellow, East-West Center, Hawaii

Sunil Govinnage's book 'Black Swans and Other Stories'
is due for release in February/March 2000

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