Shyam Selvadurai, Funny Boy

Neluka Silva (University of Colombo)

Ed. by John Thieme, University of East Anglia
The Literary Encyclopedia. Volume 3.1.2: Canadian Writing and Culture (Anglophone): The Twentieth Century and beyond, 1900-present.
Vol. editors: Sarah Henzi (Simon Fraser University), Kerry Myler (Birmingham Newman University), Glen Nichols (Mount Allison University), Wendy Roy (University of Saskatchewan), Denis Salter (McGill University), Karis Shearer (University of British Columbia)

Dates

First circulation or publication 1994

Places

Sri Lanka (Country of Origin)

Genres and Modes

Novel

Resources

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Shyam Selvadurai was born in 1965 in Sri Lanka and moved with his family to Toronto, Canada in 1984.

Funny Boy

is Selvadurai's first novel. It is set in Sri Lanka, and is constructed in the form of six beautifully rendered stories about a boy growing up within an extended upper-middle-class Tamil family in Colombo during the seven years leading up to the 1983 riots, when he and his family sleep in their shoes so they can flee from the Sinhalese mobs. When Selvadurai's

Funny Boy

was published in 1994, it was hailed as one of the most powerful renditions of the trauma of the prevailing ethnic tensions in contemporary Sri Lanka. Selvadurai brings together the struggles of class, ethnicity and sexuality. These issues are discussed through the development of the protagonist, a young boy,…

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1335 words

Citation: Silva, Neluka. "Funny Boy". The Literary Encyclopedia. First published 01 July 2003 [https://www.litencyc.com/php/sworks.php?rec=true&UID=12385, accessed 18 April 2024.]

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