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| Friday, 23 April 2004 |
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A novel of the highest class The Hamilton Case In 2003, Rani Manicka, whose parents emigrated to Malaysia from Sri Lanka just before the Second World War, won the Best First Book Award (South-East Asia and South Pacific Region) of the Commonwealth Writers' Prize for The Rice Mother. Her feat has been emulated (indeed surpassed) this year by Sri Lankan-born writer Michelle de Kretser who was announced the winner of the more challenging Best Book Award in the same region for The Hamilton Case. De Kretser not only becomes the first Sri Lankan expatriate to win this prize - A. Sivanandan won the Best First Book Award (CWP Eurasia) for When Memory Dies in 1999-but has the distinction of overcoming formidable competitors, like Peter Carey, in the process. Although Manicka's novel is initially situated in Sri Lanka, much of the action takes place in Malaysia. Except for a few scenes in England, The Hamilton Case is located entirely in the island and focusses on the Sri Lankan upper class milieu from about the 1930s to 1971. O. L. de Kretser, the author's father, and a well-known judge in his time, had written The Pope Murder Case on the slaying of a British planter in colonial Ceylon. Michelle's novel is to some extent based on this book. In The Hamilton Case, suspicion falls on an estate labourer but Stanley Alban Marriot Obeysekere, a lawyer, and the chief character in the novel, tries to establish that the killer was really Hamilton's guest Mr. Taylor who had suspected Hamilton of having a relationship with his wife Yvette, or of trying to molest her. What is ironic is that Obeysekere, a self-proclaimed Anglophile, is passed over for promotion at the Bar for daring to suggest that an Englishman was guilty of such a crime. De Kretser has declared at interviews that she is a great fan of Agatha Christie and readers who share her interest will be enthused by those sections that deal with the murder and the "case." Unlike in most novels that belong to the genre, however, the Hamilton Case is not solved at the end. The reader is left with unanswered questions and several versions of the "truth". Stan's version is eventually problematized when compared and contrasted with those of Shivananthan, the lawyer and former schoolmate through whom Stan learns about the murder, and Jaya, Stan's brother-in-law turned politician. This novel, it should be added, also has affinities with Gothic romance. The corridors of the ancient walauwes echo with ghosts and other "presences." The many suicides, infanticides, and premature deaths, too, contribute to the eerie, debilitating atmosphere that devastates the lives of the Obeysekeres. The book has much more to offer than "thriller" value, however. The Hamilton Case is an engrossing, and at times, corrosive critique of the lives and times of the Sri Lankan elite during the death throes of Empire; furthermore, like Michael Ondaatje's Running in the Family, this novel demonstrates that their lives, though grievously flawed, were nevertheless colourful and entertaining. What is especially engaging is the author's wry sense of humour that provides some relief to readers who are privy to the many horrific events that take place within the confines of this book. Prodigals Stanley, whose grandfather was a mudaliyar, grows up in a household which boasts of the kind of inherited wealth that enabled his parents to live like prodigals. Whenever his mother Maud quarrelled with his father, she would throw objects like "first editions of Tennyson, eighteenth-century candlesticks, a set of silver figurines, a silver salver..." at him. Their world was a whirl of champagne parties, balls, and long holidays in the South or Nuwara Eliya. To this add hunting big game in jungles, visits to flower-shows and illicit, stimulating, love affairs. Such profligacy has its inevitable consequences. Stanley's father dies leaving huge debts that his son can only repay by selling their ancestral property and family heirlooms. Then again, Stanley gets even with his (now impecunious) mother for having an affair with her son-in-law Jaya (knowledge of which Stanley thinks prompts his sister Claudia to kill her newly born baby and then herself) by practically incarcerating Maud in her ancient, termite infested "mul gedera" in Lokugama, an exercise which drives the once proud socialite insane. Stanley tries to regain, or "purchase," the glamour that he considers his birthright by marrying into a wealthy family that his ancestors would have despised. All the antiques and land he acquires do not compensate for the loss of the original estates and possessions, however. The various obsessions that consume him after his sister's death, furthermore, affect his relations with others so much so that his son Harry whose affection he craves prefers his "unsophisticated" mother to Stan and ultimately abandons him totally. The thrust of the novel seems to suggest that many "aristocratic," Sri Lankan families were fated to pay for their excesses in such ways. One of Michelle de Kretser's greatest strengths as a novelist is her ability to deal with the politics of the time in a manner that is not intrusive. This novel covers the 1950s, when S. W.R. D. Bandaranaike's socialist government swept into power, established Sinhala as the official language, and adopted several measures which eventually resulted in the westernised elite losing its privileged position in society. Indeed, this was the climate which induced Burghers, like the de Kretsers, to emigrate. Anyone who has read R. K. Narayan's Waiting for the Mahatma will realize that even the greatest novelists face difficulties when they introduce recent, historical figures into their work. De Kretser avoids this trap with some aplomb. Jaya has traits of two Prime Ministers, S. W. R. D. Bandaranaike and Sir John Kotelawala (and perhaps other politicians of the period as well), although he is never identified as a Prime Minister in this novel. Political agenda It is commonplace for many of those who left the country at that time to attribute its ills to the political agenda of the 1956 government. De Kretser eschews such a facile option for a more complex exploration of the issues. To Stanley, Jaya epitomises those who "let the side down" by shelving their aristocratic ancestry and manners for populist measures and demagoguery. He is the ultimate bounder, the "past master of the conceptual sleight of hand." To Shivananthan, Jaya's former political ally, "Jaya lived to see his theorems of national pride codified into a geometry of racial hatred." The discerning reader soon learns that both Stanley and Shivananthan are unreliable narrators whose assessments are erratic at best. Stanley for one is obviously envious of Jaya's ability to charm people, especially his sister Claudia whom he "loses" to Jaya. He also smarts at Jaya's constant jibe that Stanley Obeysekere stands for "Obey by name, Obey by nature;" in other words, Stan is described as one who is ever willing to fulfil the needs of Empire and the institutions that represent it. Jaya, on the contrary, makes use of his knowledge of these institutions to challenge their principles and change the status quo although (the author makes plain) these revolutionary transformations are accompanied by racist policies that in turn create discord of another kind. The Sri Lankan expatriate novel has been beneficial on the whole because it has provided readers overseas access to the country via literature. Unfortunately, some of these novels tend to exoticize the island which no doubt pleases publishers and boosts sales but produces an enervating, Orientalist effect. What is refreshing in The Hamilton Case is that descriptions of the ocean, wildlife, scenery, and local customs are usually functional. When Stanley speaks pompously, like a game hunter of old, about the skills involved in shooting an elephant and sets off on a hunt, one expects the kind of account that is commonplace in colonialist writing. But the entire sequence is rendered farcical when Jaya who is not privy to any of these theories shoots the elephant (with "beginner's luck," according to Stan) and afterwards adopts "..an ironic pose (while waiting to have his picture taken). The faint but perceptible exaggeration of the stance parodies all those photographs of self-satisfied Englishmen lording it over the corpses of their Empire's fauna." The word parodies is especially important here because the novel at times mocks the style adopted by others who have written on Sri Lanka, including expatriate writers. When Maud who has engaged with royalty and socialities from various countries up to her middle years is forced to live in appalling circumstances later on, she exoticises her immediate environment in writing to her former associates thus: "I wish you could see this marvellous old place," she says in one letter, "I have been gorging myself on rambutans. Such fruit! Spiked scarlet globes the size of a hen's egg, split open with a thumbnail to yield segments of delectable white flesh." Then again, as Shivananthan who has emigrated to Canada and taken to writing fiction on Sri Lanka acknowledges, "The coloniser returns as a tourist, you see. And he is mad for difference. That is the luxury commodity we now supply, as we once kept him in cinnamon and sapphire. The prose may be as insipid as rice cooked without salt. No matter: call up a monsoon or the rustle of a sari and watch him salivate." Flexible language The Hamilton Case is elegantly written in flexible language that captures the cadences of the various voices found therein, and its narrative technique capable of rendering the story from multifarious perspectives. In its attitude to colonialism and the "white washed" local elite, as Jean-Paul Sartre would have described them, the novel is variously satirical, irreverent, subversive, and occasionally nostalgic. But there is a word not used so far in this review that must be employed to make it complete-compassion. De Kretser is obviously cognisant of the fact that the evil traits that some people possess are not always of their own making. While she is caustic in her treatment of characters, like Stan and Maud, she is scrupulous in showing that they are what they are because of a colonial "disease" that in some cases is incurable, or of accidents in the past which have substantially altered their personalities. As Shivananthan says of Stan, "I think he glimpsed, obscurely, that we were being written by the grand narratives of our age." Condemnation, therefore, is invariably tempered by compassion. During my stint as a judge of the Commonwealth Writers' Prize in 1999 and its Eurasia Chairperson in 2002 and 2003, I was privileged to assess novels by the likes of Austin Clark, Richard Flanagan, Michael Frayn, Nadine Gordimer, Doris Lessing, Ian McEwan, Caryl Philips, and Arundathie Roy to name just a few. Since I do not know the other novels that have won regional awards in 2004, I cannot say how De Kretser's work rates with those of her rivals for the overall Commonwealth Writers' Prize. What I do know is that it is a novel of the highest class which is on a par with the best of those that I have read as a CWP judge over the years. The Hamilton Case will surely become essential reading for the general reader, students of Sri Lankan Literature in English and specialists in Postcolonial Literatures whatever the outcome of this year's competition. - Walter Perera, Professor of English, University of Peradeniya. ############ Giving access to a political ideology Out of The Darkness (2003) It is delightful to see Amarasekara's novel Asathya Katavak and its sequel Premaye Sathya Katava translated into English as Out of The Darkness by Vijitha Fernando. The translation gives the English reading public in Sri Lanka and abroad access to a political ideology that has become the inspiration in anti-reform politics in Sri Lanka. Fernando has, commendably captured the mood of Amarasekara's narrative in her translation. The novel is set against the turbulent times of youth radicalism of the late '60s and early '70s. At one level, the story is about an estranged love affair between Nimal and Indira, which leads to the tragic death of the former. At another level, the story is about misunderstandings and conflicts between social forces that have shaped Sri Lanka over the years. Indira, a medical student, is the daughter of Dr. Weerasingha, a well-known leftist from the South. Her mother was a selfless Trotskyite Jew who came to live in Sri Lanka. Indira represents the radical second generation of the left movement in Sri Lanka that opposed class collaboration politics. Nimal the engineering student, who came from humble rural origins from the deep South represents the social segment that became the driving force of the JVP politics. Amarasekara portrays the death of Nimal as due to Indira's inability to understand him, which eventually leads Nimal on a journey of insanity and destruction. Amarasekara has been advocating a political line that sought a cohabitation between Sinhala Buddhist nationalism and Marxism since the mid 1970s. The novel is a lament about the tragic consequences of not coming together of Nimal's heart and Indira's brains. To expect a synthesis between Anagarika Dharmapala's anti-minority Sinhala Buddhism and the revolutionary working class internationalism of the Samasamaja movement was most unrealistic. Amarasekara's realisation of this impossibility is visible only in the early 1990s in his book titled Arunalunuseren Arunodayata, in which he explores a Sinhala Buddhist brand of socialism. The point is not that Indira did not understand Nimal but Nimal was not yet mature enough to understand Indira. Nimal represents the semi-feudal, economic and social structures that are dying an agonising death and the forces of violent reaction. -Sankajaya Nanayakkara, Sabaragamuwa University. |
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