Praise for ‘Offerings to the Blue God’: ‘Rich narrative on the least told of a wounded Island’ The Asian Review   

Back Cover:

A child saved from the tsunami finds herself trapped as a domestic slave, a young woman finds out the true face of her lover when she builds up the courage to visit his home, an ex-terrorist attempts to forget her past and start a new life, a bored journalist tries to find an easy way to migrate, a young woman reaches out to God to find a solution to her bad luck only to change her mind when confronted with a troubling thought.

Imaginative and entertaining these nine stories set in Sri Lanka take you on a journey into a country that has come through a devastating thirty-year terrorist conflict and is trying to put it all behind. Amusing yet sometimes frustrating, the stories follow the lives of people from diverse walks of life

Review:

Shirani Rajapakse’s Offerings to the Blue God takes its reader along the least taken paths in the Island’s life. The stories are characterised by a dynamic writing and presentation style, a unique voice that Rajapakse’s stories often carry, and an unparalleled level of integrity that shines through in each story. 

The work comprises nine stories—all of them set in Sri Lanka, that take its reader on a captivating journey into a country emerging from the rubbles of a devastating thirty-year war, revealing its strength and enduring spirit as it strives to overcome its troubled past. Shirani Rajapakse, diverting from the popular war stories of Sri Lanka, brings equilibria to the literature that talks about the Island’s troubled past; her writing set in the backdrop of the civil conflict of Sri Lanka not only highlights that both warring parties were victims of the war ‘equally’ but also, going a further step, Rajapakse pushes the reader to question the global media behaviour, the western influence of information flow. No other author based in Sri Lanka has discussed the information ecosystem and its impact in works of fiction so far. These are not only highly relevant to the bygone past of the island nation but also to today’s conflicts. 

The stories, which follow the lives of individuals from diverse backgrounds, present a captivating narrative that expertly blends humour and intense darkness, a delicate balance rarely struck unless the storyteller possesses the skill to tread the fine line where humour can turn tragic and narratives can lose themselves in profound depths.

‘Offerings to the Blue God’ is rich in the dark humour that is a hallmark of the writer’s style; Rajapakse masterfully interweaves the satire with jarring plot twists, grounding the narrative and offering moments of optimism to counter the pervasive despair. The sharp turns in the plot prevent the reader from fully succumbing to the story’s bleakness, while the author skillfully reveals unexpected rays of hope. Thus, from the cyclical trauma, marked by repetitive national crises and a pervasive pseudo-spirituality, Rajapakse’s work delves deeper than most contemporary writing, exploring the island nation’s post-independence history, its resilience in the face of man-made and natural calamities, a history palpable in the very air.

Despite being structured as a short story collection, “Offerings to the Blue God” possesses a narrative unity; each tale contributes to a larger, cohesive story that resonates deeply within the reader’s mind, like a work of a novel. Whether a conscious choice or a happy accident, the presentation in ‘Offerings to the Blue God’ makes it a must-read.

About the author:

Shirani Rajapakse, a Sri Lankan poet and short story writer, has won numerous awards and accolades for her poetry and short stories. Her work has been published in various journals and anthologies, including Dove Tales, Buddhist Poetry, Litro, Berfrois, Flash Fiction International, Voices Israel, About Place, Mascara, Counterpunch, Silver Birch, International Times, New Verse News, Cultural Weekly, The Write-In, Harbinger Asylum, and more. Rajapakse’s work has also been translated into Farsi, Spanish, French, Chinese, and Urdu.

By Ema Cohen