....another person yelled near the carcass of the buffalo. A lady screamed, “She seems dead!” The little girl Ramayee asked, "Patti, you sold me just for thirty rupees?” the girl sobbed and accepted the old lady's proposal. Was it good or bad? Nethuni asked, "What happened to my neighbours?" Kani replied, "They wiped off the people on those two or three streets. Most of them including men, women and babies fled to the North. On the way, many perished due to the shelling and…”
....another person yelled near the carcass of the buffalo. A lady screamed, "She seems dead!" The little girl Ramayee asked, "Patti, you sold me just for thirty rupees?" the girl sobbed and accepted the old lady's proposal. Was it good or bad? Nethuni asked, "What happened to my neighbours?" Kani replied, "They wiped off the people on those two or three streets. Most of them including men, women and babies fled to the North. On the way, many perished due to the shelling and..."
The Ayah and Other Stories is a collection of acutely observed stories that will take you on a memorable journey. Spanning settings from the 1960s Sri Lanka to Somalia of the 80s and to the 21st century Paris, each vignette provides a superbly rendered and deeply atmospheric glimpse into the private and emotional worlds of a variety of narrators. Boisard-Fernando's collection offers not only a deft handling of place and setting, but also the tantalizing possibility of seeing the world through the eyes of her subtle and loveable characters. The Ayah and Other Stories was born out of her poignant memories of a blessed childhood in Sri Lanka and keenly perceptive womanhood in France, in between traversing many places and time-frames the world over.
In these stories, the narrators are individuals hapless in the face of some kind of trouble. An over-worked doctor, a returning soldier, a worried husband, or an ambushed lawyer; in each case, the supernatural is an unwanted guest that comes a-knocking. Whether it is for better or worse, however, is only revealed at the end, keeping the reader in suspense as the plot unfolds. Even in this modern age of science, there are many episodes that are simply beyond our ken. The Dalvey Estate Midnight Visitor, for instance, recounts the strange events in a ward that lead a medical man to wonder if there may be something else at work to aid him in his noble calling. Similarly, the husband in The Eerie Guardian prides himself on his no-nonsense attitude, easily dismissing his colleagues’ warnings as flights of fancy. Yet, it is only when he becomes trapped in a living nightmare that he begins to seek the truth behind his misfortunes. At the same time, these are more than dime-store pulp horror. Though the stories tell of grisly figures and tragic pasts, at their very heart, they are about fundamentally human emotions. The lingering memory of safety that a parental figure evokes in The Robin Road Peanut Seller. The violent anger at familial betrayal and stolen love in The Ghostly Bride. Look beyond the tattered rags and chilling voices that these spectres wear like armour, and you may find something that is not so different from you and I after all.
Post-Colonial Literatures in English, together with English Literature and American Literature, form one of the three major groupings of literature in English, and, as such, are widely studied around the world. Their significance derives from the richness and variety of experience which they reflect. In three volumes, this Encyclopedia documents the history and development of this body of work and includes original research relating to the literatures of some 50 countries and territories. In more than 1,600 entries written by more than 600 internationally recognized scholars, it explores the effect of the colonial and post-colonial experience on literatures in English worldwide.
