About the Author

Harshana Rambukwella is Director, Postgraduate Institute of English, Open University of Sri Lanka. He received his PhD from the University of Hong Kong, where he is Honorary Assistant Professor at the School of English. Harshana’s research interests are in literary history, postcolonial theory and sociolinguistics. He is a trustee of the Gratiaen Trust of Sri Lanka and has served on a number of Sinhala and English literary panels in the country.

Reviews

'An excellent synopsis of society's socio-political and economic evolution to readers interested in understanding colonial and post-colonial Sri Lanka in the 19th and 20th centuries. ... Simultaneously, the book is also a reference point and guide to local and global scholarship that have attempted to read various aspects of nationalism.'
The Island

'An important scholarly contribution to the many ways in which the nation can be narrated.'
Sri Lanka Journal of Social Sciences

'Any study of the nation is a study of history and a study of historiography, and Rambukwella does that, but does more, for he welds together critical cultural studies analytic of texts, drawing upon novels, stories, popular culture... The strength of the book lies squarely in the rereading of history through the lens of authenticity and the self-fashioning process of protagonists. Authenticity is not a disinterested discursive trope; it shapes people's careers, and also helps shape history as an agential force.'
Sri Lanka Guardian

'The strength of [Politics and Poetics of Authenticity] lies squarely in the rereading of history through the lens of authenticity and the self-fashioning process of protagonists. Authenticity is not a disinterested discursive trope; it shapes people's careers, and also helps shape history as an agential force'The Island, 2018

'To a long list of works that engage with Sinhala nationalism, Dr. Harshana Rambukwella's The Politics and Poetics of Authenticity: A Cultural Genealogy of Sinhala Nationalism is an important addition.'