Uprooted is the English translation of Gamperaliya, the novel by Martin Wickramasinghe first published in Sinhala in 1944. Sarasa publishes the translation, made by the scholar Lakshmi de Silva and the author's son Ranga Wickramasinghe. The original is widely described as the first Sinhala novel written in the realistic tradition, and 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 village customs give way to the commercial culture of the city. Reviewers of the translation have praised the way it carries Sinhala idiom into English while keeping the flavour of the original. The Sinhala title has also been rendered as Changing Village and Village Upheaval.
The novel opens a trilogy continued in Kaliyugaya and Yuganthaya, which follow Nanda and Piyal's descendants. Lester James Peries filmed it in 1963, and the film won the Golden Peacock for best film at the International Film Festival of India in New Delhi in 1964.
It suits English-language readers who want to read the classic Sri Lankan novel without knowing Sinhala.
- Author: Martin Wickramasinghe
- Publisher: Sarasa
- Published: 2017
- Language: English
- ISBN: 9789556950069
