Guy Gunaratne was ‘a rebellious teen’ (Picture courtesy The Independent)
Sixteen-year-old Sam Gunaratne was working for the Public Works Department in Sri Lanka in 1951, when his foreman picked him randomly and asked whether he liked to go to England to work. Sam who was not very educated did not know his geography well, nor where that county was, but replied ‘Yes’.
After three weeks’ voyage on HMS Canberra he disembarked at Southampton, England, a county totally alien to him. He did not speak English and spent rough early years in England working as a labourer, porter, flipping burghers and finally found a job as a clerk in the Sri Lankan High Commission in London where he felt comfortable working with people who looked like him and spoke the language he was used to in his birth county.
Sam began to learn English in night schools and during lunch breaks he used to sneak into a bookshop where he sat on the floor leafing through books and learn English.
April 19 of this year was perhaps the happiest day of Sam’s life when went to the same bookshop and picked up his son Guy’s book, In Our Mad and Furious City, which was among the top ten contenders for the Man Booker Prize this year. Guy’s picture of his 83-year-old father fondly holding his son’s debut novel, and leafing through it, went viral on Twitter.
“Sixty years ago my father was a teenager and a new immigrant in 1950s London. He used to sneak into Foyles (the book shop) every Saturday, sit on the floor and teach himself English. Yesterday, he returned to pick his son’s novel off the shelf. This universe is spectacular,” said Guy’s Tweet on April 20.
Guy was born in North West London and has lived in Berlin, Helsinki, San Francisco and Sweden working as a designer, documentary filmmaker and as a video journalist covering post-conflict areas around the world.
In Our Mad and Furious City follows three young Londoners, all second-generation immigrants and two older characters (both first-generation immigrants). Set around a single estate in north-west London, and told over 48 hours, the story was sparked by the 2013 killing of Lee Rigby (a soldier) by extremist Michael Adebolajo ‘to avenge the killing of Muslims by British Armed Forces’. In a radio interview, Guy says a character in his novel is inspired by his father’s immigrant experience in the 50s England.
He says that born and growing up in London he had a quite different experience and reaction to race relations from his father’s and discussed with him about things like Nottinghamshire riots of 1958 between black and white males. Guy believes though his father was born in Sri Lanka he is very much a Londoner. Last year, when his parents went to Sri Lanka to spend their retirement his father contracted dengue fever, which could have been fatal. After that harrowing experience Sam and his wife came back to London.
Talking about his relationship with his dad, Guy says he was a difficult teenager, rebellious and ‘entirely dismissive of any advice or instruction my father had to offer’. The two were different and never grew especially close. He says this kind of stories are familiar to many growing up in England, especially those who are second or third generation immigrants.
Guy cites a quote from American writer James Baldwin to emphasize the difference in generations. “The second and third have no time to listen to the first,” Baldwin had written about his difficult relationship with his father. “This feels partly accurate to me: only shame, immaturity or stubbornness, I think, kept me from asking how my father arrived in Britain,” Guy has told during in an interview.
“My father is back in the UK again, with my mother; we all decided after his scare (dengue fever) that it would be best to continue their retirement in London. The months since have felt like a second chance. My father and I often talk, and he tells me more stories – I press him for the details now, all the better for a novelist – and he enjoys telling me the little things he used to leave out: the westerns he used to see at the cinema, his admiration for Muhammad Ali, his inexplicable love for the music of Abba”.
Guy says he has questions for his father. A career in the arts is something he had not expected nor encouraged for his son. “I still struggle to explain to him exactly what I do to make a living. But he listens when I talk to him about my books and asks whether I will ever write one about him. I will, I say, but you have to tell me everything”.
Guy has started writing his second novel. Describing it, he says, “A strange, jangly modern day picaresque, I think. Mulching together Arabic and European poetry. That’s what I’ve been telling people at least. It’s really just a story about a father and son”.
Canadian writer Michael Ondaatje was the first Sri Lankan-born author to win the Booker in 1992 for his Second World War novel The English Patient. The book also was crowned as the best work of fiction from the last five decades of Man Booker Prize and won the Golden Man Booker this year.
The other notable Sri Lankan-born writer to achieve a Booker honour was Romesh Gunasekera who was a finalist in the Man Booker Prize for his novel Reef in 1994. – Somasiri Munasinghe
