Gamperaliya is a novel by Martin Wickramasinghe, first published in 1944. This is a Sinhala-language edition from Sarasa. It is widely described as the first Sinhala novel written in the realistic tradition, and it is often named as the greatest novel in the language.
The story is set in the early twentieth century in Koggala, the coastal village in the south of Sri Lanka where Wickramasinghe was born. It follows the household of Muhandiram Kaisaruwatte, a landed family living in the old manor house, the Maha Gedara. Piyal, a young man who teaches English to the daughters Anula and Nanda, falls in love with Nanda, but her parents refuse the match as beneath the family's standing, and she is married to Jinadasa Lamahewa instead. Piyal leaves for Colombo and prospers in business, while the Kaisaruwatte family slides into decline after the Muhandiram's death. Jinadasa goes away to try his luck in trade and dies in poverty, and Nanda and Piyal are finally married.
Through one family's fortunes the novel traces the passing of the old village order under British rule: the landed gentry lose ground to a rising, English-educated trading class, and the customs of village life give way to the commercial culture of the city. Critics have praised its everyday Sinhala idiom and its psychologically drawn characters. The title has been rendered in English as Village in Transition and Changing Village, and the English translation by Lakshmi de Silva and Ranga Wickramasinghe is published as Uprooted.
Gamperaliya opens a trilogy continued in Kaliyugaya (1957) and Yuganthaya (1949), which follow Nanda and Piyal's descendants. Lester James Peries filmed it in 1963, with Henry Jayasena as Piyal and Punya Heendeniya as Nanda; the film won the Golden Peacock for best film at the International Film Festival of India in New Delhi in 1964.
It suits readers of Sinhala looking for a cornerstone of modern Sinhala fiction, and anyone who knows the Peries film and wants the book behind it.
- Author: Martin Wickramasinghe
- Publisher: Sarasa
- Published: 1944
- Language: Sinhala
- Pages: 222
- ISBN: 9789550201365
