About the Author

Tissa Abeysekara was born in Colombo, Sri Lanka, in 1939. He began writing fiction in his native Sinhala the late 1950's, but for the next thirty years devoted his professional life to film and television, becoming one of the country's most respected screenwriters and directors. In 1997, at the age fifty-eight, he published the novella Bringing Tony Home, which went on to win Sri Lanka's esteemed Gratiaen Prize, an annual award for the best novel in English given by a trust established by Michael Ondaatje. In addition to many screenplays for television and film, Abeysekara is the author of the novel, In My Kingdom of the Sun and the Holy Peak, Pitagamkarayo (The Outsiders), and the collection of short short essays, Roots, Reflections and Reminiscences. He is currently the Director of the Television Training Institute of Sri Lanka.

Reviews

“What is wonderful is the way Abeysekara can make a whole era hang on a single strand of memory.”
—Michael Ondaatje, Booker Prize winning author of The English Patient

"These multilayered stories, worth repeat reading, make a welcome introduction to Abeysekara and his homeland."
—Publishers Weekly

“Impressions of youth—painful lessons learned, emotions intensely experienced and adulthood broached—are reconsidered from the perspective of maturity in these long, sensuously detailed fictions.… A sophisticated jigsaw of a book, sensitively…mixing memory and history with regret and rites of passage.”
—Kirkus Reviews

"Bringing Tony Home is a collection of short stories from Tissa Abeysekara, who provokes the strange coincidences of life...highly recommended reading for fans of short fiction."
—The Midwest Book Review