FATHER CABRAAL’S RECIPE FOR LOVE CAKE TRIUMPHS AT THE 31ST GRATIAEN PRIZE

Ramya Jirasinghe | 31st Gratiaen Prize

Ramya Jirasinghe (31st Gratiaen Prize Winner)

The Gratiaen Prize is one of the most looked forward-to literary events of the year. Celebrating the richness of Sri Lankan literature, the Gratiaen Prize fosters the aspirations and prestige of promising Sri Lankan literary minds. Founded by novelist, poet, essayist and Booker Prize winner Micheal Ondaatje in 1992, the Gratiaen Trust was established using the funds he earned from his Booker Prize-winning novel The English Patient. Since then, the Gratiaen Trust has been a significant force in Sri Lanka’s literary scene, unerring in its mission to recognize and promote creative writing in English and supporting generations of local authors in their efforts to hone their craft. To this end the Trust awards the Gratiaen Prize annually to the best work of creative writing in English by a Sri Lankan author resident in the country. This year the highly anticipated Gratiaen Prize award ceremony took place on Saturday, 1st June at 6.30pm at The Stables, Park Street Mews with the support of the John Keells Foundation and the British Council.

The Gratiaen Trust carries forward its tradition of honouring Sri Lankan stories in all its nuances and complexity this year, ushering in its 31st Gratiaen Prize winner Ramya Jirasinghe for her debut novel Father Cabraal’s Recipe for Love Cake. The novel is set on a tropical island fort built by a colonial trading company in the 18th century, and is an ambitious story following the life and spirit of Isabella Catherina Silvaria as she crafts a cake as sweet as wild honey and as unforgettable as a great love. With a special focus on the role of African traders in our colonial past, her writing traces intriguing layers of Sri Lankan history and weaves in immersive sensory language and intricate detail.

In announcing the Jury’s verdict regarding the winning novel, Chair of the Jury Dr Anthony Joseph proclaimed, “When a writer has been working at a craft honestly and seriously, like a musician they begin to have a fluid control of their instrument. This combined with a deep humanity has offered something truly special here: a text which transcends its time and contexts, crafted with a poet’s sensibility, and a historian’s precision.”

Nisreen Jafferjee (Co-Chair Gratiaen Trust),  Dr. Anthony Joseph (Gratiaen Prize Chair of the Jury),  Angeline Ondaatjie (Gratiaen Prize Jury),  Lal Medawattegedara, Selvi Sachithanandam (Gratiaen Prize Shortlist Contestants),  Ramya Jirasinghe (Gratiaen Prize Winner),  Pasan Jayasinghe,  Vihanga Perera (Gratiaen Prize Shortlist Contestants),  Nadija Tambiah (President, Executive VP, Head-Legal & Secretarial at John Keells),  Orlando Edwards (Country Director British Council Sri Lanka),  Nafeesa Amiruddeen (Co-Chair Gratiaen Trust)

The winning novel was selected from an incredible line-up of shortlisted works which were announced earlier in the year on April 29th, of which included  A Passing Return by Pasan Jayasinghe; Gnanam by Selvi Sachithanandam; Students and Rebels by Vihanga Perera and When Ghosts Die by Lal Medawattegedara. These variegated mixture of published and unpublished creative works dominated in their calibre across a total of 51 submissions that spanned a gamut of genres including poetry, fiction, auto and biographical writing, drama, musical theater and history. 

The jury for the Gratiaen Prize followed their signature triumvirate: The Chair of the Jury, The Academic and The Informed Reader. This year’s Chair was Dr Anthony Joseph an award winning Trinidad-born poet, novelist, academic and musician. His 2022 collection Sonnets for Albert won the T.S. Eliot Prize for Poetry 2022 and the OCM BOCAS Prize for Caribbean Poetry. His 2018 novel Kitch: A Fictional Biography of a Calypso Icon was shortlisted for the Republic of Consciousness Prize, the Royal Society of Literature’s Encore Award and the OCM Bocas Prize for Caribbean Fiction. In 2019, he was awarded a Jerwood Compton Poetry Fellowship. As a musician, he has released eight critically acclaimed albums, and in 2020 received a Paul Hamlyn Foundation Composers Award. He is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature and a Lecturer in Creative Writing at King's College, London. Dr. Ruvani Ranasinha was The Academic on the jury, and is Professor of Global Literature at the Department of English, King’s College London. She specializes in postcolonial literature and theory, especially relating to South Asia and the South Asian diaspora. Finally, The Informed Reader was Angeline Ondaatjie, a renowned hotelier with over three decades of diverse experience in tourism, financial services and the manufacturing sector. She holds a Master’s Degree in Chemical Engineering from the University of Texas at Austin, USA, and a Bachelor of Science Degree in Materials Engineering from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, USA. Committed to academia and educational initiatives, Angeline serves on the Education Council of MIT and is a Country Advisor to Princeton Asia.

 

10th June, 2024 Written Art | Prose

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