a fine novel that is both delicately written and very, very wise. With its vivid evocation of time and place, its wise characterisation, its involving emotional dramas, this is a novel that deserves, and will surely gain, a wide readership' Adam Lively, Sunday Times
Not least of the novel's virtues is the way he seems to conjure up a whole social panorama. Annalukshmi's Jane Austen-ish domestic life - anxious mother, bossy aunt, catty sisters, endless talk of prospective husbands - is brought to life with glancing humour. The characters and setting are established in a measured, finely judged manner, allowing us to feel at home with them. this is, in many ways, an old-fashioned novel, brimming with old-fashioned virtues. Annalukshmi is a strong-willed young woman whose family is intent upon arranging a proper marriage for. In a parallel narrative, her uncle, Balendran Navaratnam, respectably married but secretly homosexual, has his life disrupted by the arrival in Ceylon of Richard, a lover from long ago. Set among the upper classes in the gracious, repressive world of 1920s Ceylon (now Sri Lanka), Cinnamon Gardens tells the brilliantly intertwined stories of two extraordinary characters. Among them is Annalukshmi, an independent and high-spirited young teacher intent on thwarting her parents' plans to arrange her marriage.
In Shyam Selvadurai's masterful second novel, set in repressive and complex 1920s Ceylon, the Cinnamon Gardens is a residential enclave of wealthy Ceylonese. Cinnamon Gardens by Shyam Selvadurai is a lush historical fiction novel set in Ceylon (Sri Lanka) in 1927. Selvadurai has captured horrifyingly well the airlessness of a society in which only a few are truly able to breathe, and deeply' Mary Loudon, The Times
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