I like novels written by Lankans in English. These include writers abroad who were originally from Lanka. They live in various parts of the world. However at least two such writers who live outside the country are sometimes overrated at the expense of other writers that live here and outside. As a reader with cultivated taste and one without any academic pretensions I appreciate very much the writings of others. In my columns I have often written my responses to the works of Lankans.

Belatedly I read a novel titled Like the Wind which was originally published in the U.K in 2003 and reprinted in Lanka in 2005 by Vijitha Yapa Publications. The writer is Daisy Abeygunasekera (nee Wimalagunaratna) who has shortened her name to suit the western reader as Daisy Abbey.

As a practice I always include some details of the authors for the benefit of readers who might not have heard of such writers. So, let me cull out the note on Daisy Abey as published in the huge novel of 334 pages.

"D A was born near Matara and was educated at the university of Peradeniya from 1960-1963. In 1965 Daisy migrated to the U.K. where, for three decades, she worked and raised her family. She worked for Zurich Insurance and then for 17 years with the homeless in the inner city, helping vulnerable people with psychiatric and addiction problems, many of whom had been in prison or worked as prostitutes to regain their lives. Now she devotes her time to writing. The sadness of separation from her homeland, juxtaposed with the experience of urban poverty in the West, has combined to make her one of the contemporary Sri Lanka's leading writers."

We learn that she writes poetry too and the following publications stand to her credit: City of Leeds, Letter to a Friend, Under any Sky, In Exile, Silent Protest and On Penine Heights.

There are 49 Chapters in the novel and the story is interestingly woven covering the social, cultural and even political situations in both countries –Lanka and the U.K. As such it is a valuable document written in a refined and polished language to understand the scene a few decades ago. Younger readers in the country and foreign readers would have an insight into the workings in the minds of the main characters and the capture of locales in almost poetic language. This is one reason I liked the fiction very much.

The blurb in the back cover of the book says something about the novel, but it is inadequate and there is much more to that. But for the present let us see what the fiction presents:

"When newly- weds Rupa and Aruna arrive in swinging sixties London, their marriage soon stars to crumble and Rupa finds herself a single parent in a northern inner city. Daisy Abey's brilliant novel alternates between exotic scenes set in a village in the jungle (to quote a title of Leonard Woolf's) and the very different worlds of London and Leeds. When Rupa meets poet Chris Hunter it seems her problems have ended but this is far from the case. Rupa's difficulties are compounded by tensions between conflicting customs of east and west."

A few critics abroad have acclaimed this novel and one (Debjani Chatterjee) goes to the extent of finding some similarities between Abey's novel and the American Classic Gone with the Wind. But I would agree with him when he says: Relationships are important in this book, are plot and dialogue. Among other things, it tells the story of a journey from innocence to experience…Like Scarlet in Gone with the Wind, Abey's heroine too is a strong woman and a survivor"

Another critic (Barry Tebb) goes further to say that the "first challenge to Leonard Woolf's timeless classic comes from a Sri Lankan woman émigré"

I am not sure whether Abey studied in the Sinhala medium at Peradeniya, but astonishingly she writes in measured and appropriate English with finesse.

I would agree with the critic that " the flow of language and the stylistic flashes abounding in the novel cannot but make one wonder how Daisy Abey –like the late great Joseph Conrad- has made her second language the medium of her great gift."

If the writer is presently living in Lanka, we would expect her to write a sequel to her Like the Wind or else write a fresh novel in capturing the present Lanka with all its complexities.

It took a long time for me to relish and feel and analyze each chapter, but it was worth the exercise.