By Lal Medawattegedara
Playing Pillow Politics at MGK
Winner Gratiaen Prize 2012
Playing Pillow Politics at MGK won the Gratiaen Prize in 2012. This is a novel about ‘home’ and losing one’s ‘home’; class inequality; political violence and resistance to such violence. The story is narrated by a disabled narrator with paranormal abilities who re-captures the memories of people, place and events erased for political expediency. Toyota Nanda must live her Bollywood dream or end it—violently; Tandoori Nanda must navigate the fake legal luminaries who are out to claim her home; Victoria Malli must leave the country to overcome his negative complex that is eating into his sanity. Print Preethi is obsessed with his wife’s photograph; and Natami must learn how to play politics with his pillow. These characters are remembered with their actual smells and sounds by the disabled boy who tells his story to a CFL bulb, his constant companion.
“The day I first saw Mr. Kodiwinner was also the day I first saw so much of opulence and comfort in one place. That statement might not make much sense to you, if you have had a breezy life where things appeared for you when you snapped your fingers. You might want to call me a godey bass—an unsophisticated laborer—and break the CFL bulb. But, if you have lived as a squatter in a hut all your life, where things disappeared more than they appeared, and where life bludgeoned you onto a hard surface—the way washerman or washerwoman dashed clothes on to a rock—to crush your spirit to millions of impotent particles incapable of forming any universe, then you would understand what I a m saying …” (Quote from Playing Pillow Politics at MGK)
Lal Medawattegedera wins the 2012 Gratiaen Prize
https://www.ft.lk/Lifestyle/
Thursday, 9 May 2013
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A fantastical Lankan novel
It’s book politics!
https://www.dailynews.lk/
Tuesday, Nov 03, 2015
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