Selvadurai, Shyam 1965–

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Selvadurai, Shyam 1965–

Personal

Born 1965, in Colombo, Sri Lanka; immigrated to Canada, 1984. Education: York University (Toronto, Ontario, Canada), B.F.A.

Addresses

Home—Toronto, Ontario, Canada. Agent—Westwood Creative Artists, 94 Hurbord St., Toronto M5S 1G6, Canada.

Career

Novelist, essayist, and educator. York University, Toronto, Ontario, Canada, currently professor of creative writing.

Awards, Honors

Giller Prize shortlist for best Canadian novel or short story collection published in English, 1994, and Smithbooks/Books in Canada First Novel Award, and Lambda Literary Award for gay men's fiction, Lambda Literary Foundation, both 1997, all for Funny Boy; Lambda Literary Award, Canadian Library Association Book of the Year designation, and ForeWord magazine Silver award in young-adult category, all for Swimming in the Monsoon Sea.

Writings

Funny Boy: A Novel in Six Stories, McClelland & Stewart (Toronto, Ontario, Canada), 1994, published as Funny Boy, Morrow (New York, NY), 1996.

Cinnamon Gardens (novel), Hyperion (New York, NY), 1999.

(Editor) Story-Wallah: Short Fiction from South Asian Writers, Houghton Mifflin Co (New York, NY), 2005.

Swimming in the Monsoon Sea (young-adult novel), Tundra Books (Plattsburgh, NY), 2005.

Sidelights

Canadian novelist Shyam Selvadurai has received numerous awards for his fiction. Born in Sri Lanka, Selvadurai immigrated with his family to Canada in 1983, following the outbreak of rioting in Colombo sparked by the growing ethnic and political strife between the country's majority Buddhist Sinhalese and minority Hindu Tamil population. Selvadurai studied theatre and creative writing at York University, where he now teaches, and his novels for adults and teens explore the dilemmas of being homosexual and engaging in other non-traditional lifestyles within the traditional Hindi culture of Sri Lanka.

Selvadurai's novels for adults include Funny Boy: A Novel in Six Stories as well as Cinnamon Gardens. Funny Boy takes as its theme the coming of age of a homosexual young man amidst communal conflict in 1970s and 1980s Sri Lanka. At age seven, Arjie, a Tamil boy, shuns cricket in favor of playing dress-up with his girl friends. His family, worried that Arjie may turn out "funny," presses him to behave in a more masculine way, but he rebels. The novel's six chapters, presented as a series of short stories narrated by Arjie, follow the boy as he passes into early adolescence and begins to acknowledge his homosexuality, his personal journey is complicated by the tragedies endured by friends and family as a result of Sri Lanka's growing ethnic and political strife.

Julie Myerson, writing in the London Observer, praised Funny Boy as a "lucid, serious piece of writing" that manages to avoid the literary pitfalls faced by first novels that employ adolescent narrators. In the New York Times Book Review, Edward Hower remarked that Selvadurai "writes as sensitively about the emotional intensity of adolescence as he does about the wonder of childhood," while a reviewer for Publishers Weekly praised Selvadurai's "poignant" work and his "deft hu-mor and keen eye." Discussing the awakening of Arjie's self-identity, the critic added: "It is with deep, wistful feeling that he [the author] ties that story to larger themes of family and country."

Selvadurai's second adult novel, Cinnamon Gardens, is drawn more closely from the author's life and personality. Set in Sri Lanka during the 1920s, when the country was known as Ceylon, the novel follows two characters as they encounter crucial points in life. Annalukshmi, the twenty-two-year-old heroine, wants to be a schoolteacher, over the objections of her wealthy family who wish to see her married. Meanwhile, when Balendran re-encounters his homosexual lover after two decades he is forced to confront his tradition-bound life choice.

A Publishers Weekly critic wrote that with Cinnamon Gardens Selvadurai "succeeds in bringing an Austenesque novel of manners … to Ceylon, while broadening the scope to explore themes of race, religion and sexuality in his sweeping tale of conformity and rebellion." Booklist reviewer GraceAnne A. DeCandido found the novel "both wildly exotic and oddly modern," while in Library Journal Ellen Flexman praised the work as "an introspective and unobtrusive look at a time and place unfamiliar to most readers." Praising the novelist as "a writer with keen ironic insight, intelligence to spare, and an expansive compassion for even the most exasperating of human foibles," Karl Woelz added in the Lambda Book Report that in Cinnamon Gardens the author takes readers "where all good writing promises to take us: somewhere both deep within and far beyond ourselves."

Selvadurai turns to a teen audience with Swimming in the Monsoon Sea, a novel, set in the 1980s, that is "as lush and languid as its Sri Lanka setting," according to Booklist contributor Ilene Cooper. Fourteen-year-old Amrith De Alwis lives with his godmother Aunty Bundle and her wealthy family, but is haunted by an emotional emptiness since the death of his mother and the departure for Canada of his alcoholic father. When his father returns to deal with family business, he brings with him Niresh, a sixteen-old relative to whom Amrith finds himself attracted sexually. In addition to questioning his sexual identity, Amrith must also deal with the street-wise older teen's rejection in favor of Aunty Bundle's teenaged daughters.

Praising the novel as a "wonderful exploration of a seldom-explored culture," a Kirkus Reviews writer cited Selvadurai's "evocation of place and the depth he brings to his characters and their relationships" as the book's major strengths. According to School Library Journal contributor Kathleen Isaacs, the writer's "affection for the country of his childhood is evident in this sympathetic and insightful look at first love," while in Horn Book Philip Charles Crawford deemed the book "a reflective, character-driven story that will … reward those willing to slow down and absorb the finely crafted details" of the novel's unique setting. Comparing Selva-durai's writing to that of fellow Canadian Michael Ondaatje, Canadian Review of Materials contributor Joan Marshall concluded that Swimming in the Monsoon Sea "is the kind of reflective, complex novel best appreciated by adults and older teenagers who have moved to a more thoughtful, contemplative approach to literature."

Swimming in the Monsoon Sea was not planned as a young-adult novel, but when Selvadurai became aware that his third novel was appropriate for a teen readership, he was thrilled. "I remembered reading as a teenager and everything was new and fresh and each book such a voyage of discovery," he told Asian Week online interviewer Terry Hong. "The thought of writing for such a reader was irresistible." "I think I will definitely write more YA in the future," the novelist added. "Perhaps even give up writing adult fiction altogether!"

Biographical and Critical Sources

PERIODICALS

Advocate, June 22, 1999, Michael J. Giltz, review of Cinnamon Gardens, p. 123.

Bloomsbury Review, January, 1996, review of Funny Boy: A Novel in Six Stories, p. 10.

Booklist, January 1, 1996, review of Funny Boy, pp. 792, 802; April 1, 1997, p. 1285; May 15, 1999, GraceAnne A. DeCandido, review of Cinnamon Gardens, p. 1643; September 15, 2005, Ilene Cooper, review of Swimming in the Monsoon Sea, p. 63.

Books in Canada, November, 1994, review of Funny Boy, p. 55; April, 1995, pp. 9-12.

Canadian Book Review Annual, 1994, review of Funny Boy, p. 173.

Canadian Ethnic Studies Journal, fall, 1999, Elaine Park, review of Cinnamon Gardens, p. 183.

Canadian Forum, January, 1995, review of Funny Boy, p. 40.

Canadian Literature, summer, 1996, review of Funny Boy, p. 112.

Entertainment Weekly, March 8, 1996, review of Funny Boy, p. 60; August 13, 1999, p. 70.

Guardian (London, England), November 13, 1994, review of Funny Boy, p. 28.

Horn Book, January-February, 2006, Philip Charles Crawford, review of Swimming in the Monsoon Sea, p. 89.

Kirkus Reviews, January 1, 1996, review of Funny Boy, p. 21; September 1, 2005, review of Swimming in the Monsoon Sea, p. 983.

Lambda Book Report, September-October, 1996, Jim Marks, "The Personal Is Political" (interview), pp. 1-3; July-August, 1999, Karl Woelz, review of Cinnamon Gardens, p. 17.

Library Journal, October 1, 1996, review of Funny Boy, p. 156; July, 1999, Ellen Flexman, review of Cinnamon Gardens, p. 136; April 1, 2005, Debbie Bogenschutz, review of Story-Wallah: Short Fiction from South Asian Writers, p. 90.

Maclean's, October 24, 1994, review of Funny Boy, p. 55.

Nation, September 30, 1996, p. 33.

New Yorker, June 24, 1996, review of Funny Boy, p. 155.

New York Times Book Review, April 14, 1996, review of Funny Boy, p. 22; July 25, 1999, p. 16.

Observer (London, England), January 1, 1995, review of Funny Boy, p. 18; December 24, 1995, p. 12.

Publishers Weekly, November 6, 1995, review of Funny Boy, p. 80; May 5, 1997, p. 206; June 14, 1999, review of Cinnamon Gardens, p. 48.

Quill & Quire, August, 1994, review of Funny Boy, p. 26.

School Library Journal, March, 2000, Christine C. Menefee, review of Cinnamon Gardens, p. 265; November, 2005, Kathleen Isaacs, review of Swimming in the Monsoon Sea, p. 147.

Voice Literary Supplement, June, 1996, review of Funny Boy, p. 12.

World Literature Today, autumn, 1996, review of Funny Boy, p. 1036; autumn, 1999, Nalin Jayasena, review of Cinnamon Gardens, p. 829.