A Sri Lankan Author’s Work …”Offerings to a Blue God”-by Shirani Rajapakse
Source:Thuppahis
Synopsis: A child saved from the tsunami finds herself trapped as a domestic slave, a young woman finds out the true face of her lover when she builds up the courage to visit his home, an ex-terrorist attempts to forget her past and start a new life, a bored journalist tries to find an easy way to migrate, a young woman reaches out to God to find a solution to her bad luck only to change her mind when confronted with a troubling thought.
Imaginative and entertaining these nine stories set in Sri Lanka take you on a journey into a country that has come through a devastating thirty-year terrorist conflict and is trying to put it all behind. Amusing yet sometimes frustrating, the stories follow the lives of people from diverse walks of life.
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TWO REVIEWS
A = Luke Sherwood of Basso Profundo, 26 December 2023
In her latest collection, Offerings to the Blue God, Shirani Rajapakse revisits themes on which she has expressed herself so forcefully in the past: the cheapness of non-combatant human life when bullies fight wars; the absolute terror many women must feel during life’s ordinary transactions; children forced into a lifetime of slavery, and the particular hopelessness when that child is a girl; and the self-defeating and sometimes infuriating steps one must take to follow pious rituals in supplication to gods whose representatives on Earth are only in it for the money. These themes recur with renewed focus and force in Offerings, plus we glimpse other tropes and new sophisticated structures which flare and flourish in her writing too.
For instance, Rajapakse shows terrific aptitude with stories that harbor surprise twists and “gotchas” at the end, and in each of the two cases here the door slams or the precipice disintegrates, and the results are indeed shocking, even ghastly.
The memorable character in a predicament, and the unadorned, straightforward language are both here in abundance, as we have come to expect from Rajapakse. Her decision to present her evidence in simple, forceful declaratives serves her purpose best, and she uses the tactic to good effect again. She lets her anger show without flash or authorial rant; she lets her readers’ natural vituperation well up from the stories.
But, like a couple of stories published here, this collection itself flies a silver lining, a final story that provides the “gotcha” of a young woman’s decision to turn her back on superstition, cynicism and greed. She makes an emphatic and highly symbolic gesture of discarding the old, which amounts after all to a scrap of paper scrawled with pious claptrap, into a drain in a gutter, flowing with mud and filth.
Pick up Offerings to the Blue God for her fresh take, and for the promise of hope for a rational world in the future.
B: Review by Swapna Peri of Book Reviews Café, 9 Jan. 2024
In “Offerings to the Blue God,” her latest compilation, Shirani Rajapakse returns to well-known subjects that have always been essential to her writing style. She looks with enthusiasm at the value of civilian lives during the conflict, the widespread terror that people face, especially the women in day-to-day encounters, and the terrible situation of children who are pushed into lifelong servitude. In the book, these recurring themes receive fresh attention and intensity. Rajapakse also introduces new tropes and intricate narrative frameworks that enhance the richness of his storytelling. This is my third book of hers and I always endure her writing with utmost attention to detail and interest.
Rajapakse’s works are full of surprising turns and powerful writing, which showcase her extraordinary narrative artistry. Some of the stories with unexpected turns or collapses on cliffs, with very stunning and often horrifying results make the readers sit on the edge. The style that defines Rajapakse’s writing—a profusion of endearing people caught in difficult situations and the use of simple, direct language—remains dominant. Readers establish a visceral connection with the stories through the author’s deliberate employment of robust and straightforward language. This approach effectively communicates her intense emotions without any deviation.
Nonetheless, a ray of hope may be seen through the shadows thrown by some of the stories. “Offerings to the Blue God” boldly addresses social issues and human fallibility, but it also offers hope for a world where reason prevails. The reader in me is in awe towards Rajapakse’s collection in search of new insights and hopes for a more rational and optimistic future in literary travel across themes and borders.
