Paola Brusasco s study offers an original insight into Sri Lankan literature in English and an
exploration of cultural social and linguistic issues at the basis of the country s ethnic
conflict. By focussing on two distinctive and representative writers both Burghers yet with
different personal histories Brusasco confronts issues of cartography history and language
all contributing to a specific definition of identity. Both Ondaatje and Muller are outsiders
the former because of his diasporic existence the latter because of his ex-centricity within
the reality of a divided country where the legacy of British colonialism and the process of
redefinition following independence in 1948 as well as matters of geography and history
become crucial to writers. Brusasco achieves the aim of re-directing theoretical assumptions
about the two authors works to the benefit of both academic and non specialist audiences thus
re-positioning Sri Lankan literature in the ever-growing context of South Asian studies in
English. Ondaatje s The English Patient Running in the Family and most prominently Anil s
Ghost as well as Muller s Burgher trilogy and Colombo: A Novel are here analyzed in the light
of the writings by Antonio Gramsci Michel Foucault Homi Bhabha Edward Said and Hayden
White. Quite original is the discourse on language that is translatability looked at from
cross-cultural and deconstructionist perspectives which include the debate around domesticating
and foreignizing otherness the difficult relation between Sinhala and Tamil in Sri Lanka the
controversial local variety of English and its implications at the social level. Professor
Carmen Concilio University of Turin.
