Uprooting the Pumpkin: Selections from Tamil Literature in Sri Lanka

Starting from the 1950s, a time when Sri Lankan society was in great upheaval and political unrest was rampant, new and experimental forms of writing emerged that voiced the collective agony, anxiety and hardship of Tamil life at home and abroad. Bringing together poems, short stories and a play, this anthology recounts the many struggles of the Tamils in Sri Lanka who had, over a period of time, seen death, destruction and displacement. As important contributions to ‘exile literature’, these literary works are often directly or obliquely political and reveal a preoccupation with art, but without artifice. The works in this collection experiment with language which is deeply self-reflexive and creates a new consciousness. Emphasizing the necessity and the conditions that made this literature possible, this anthology aims to create a chronological repository of writings that offer a literary account of the turbulence that unfolded and eventually gave rise to the notion of Tamil identities in Sri Lanka.