Geheniyak (also spelled Gahaniyak) is a collection of short stories by Martin Wickramasinghe (1890-1976), first published in 1924. This is a Sinhala-language edition. The title means A Woman. It was Wickramasinghe's first book of short stories, written after he had already published four novels, and the Martin Wickramasinghe Trust describes it as the first collection of its kind published in Sri Lanka.
The stories as first collected are set mostly in the semi-peasant villages of the southern province under colonial rule, with one moving into the slums of Colombo. They include "Begal", about Ando Aiya, a village teller of tall tales who keeps the customers of a tea shop entertained; "Irunu Kabaaya" ("The Torn Jacket"), which looks at villagers' weaknesses with compassion rather than mockery; and "Kuvenihaamy", the story of a poor village woman who goes into domestic service in Colombo, is abandoned when she becomes pregnant and passes through a series of exploitative relationships, with tragic consequences.
In a centenary essay on the collection, the political scientist Jayadeva Uyangoda calls it a turning point in Wickramasinghe's development as a writer: a move away from the openly argumentative style of his first novel, Leela, towards a quieter fiction built on empathy for the poor and the marginalised. That sympathy for ordinary people, and especially for women at the bottom of society, runs through much of his later work.
It suits readers interested in the beginnings of the modern Sinhala short story and in Wickramasinghe's early fiction.
- Author: Martin Wickramasinghe
- Published: 1924
- Language: Sinhala
