Kaliyugaya is a novel by Martin Wickramasinghe, first published in 1957. This is a Sinhala-language edition from Sarasa. The title refers to the Kali Yuga, the age of darkness and decline in Indian tradition, and the book has appeared in English as The Age of Kali.
It is the middle book of Wickramasinghe's trilogy. Gamperaliya (1944) ended with Nanda, daughter of a declining landed family in the southern village of Koggala, marrying Piyal, the former English tutor who had made his fortune in Colombo. Kaliyugaya picks up their lives after that marriage. The couple now live in the city, and the story turns to their three children, Alan, Chandrasoma and Nalika, who grow up and drift away from them. Alan settles in England, and a letter he writes home, accusing his parents of failing him, sets Nanda looking back over her life. Nalika's attachment to Kabalana, a trader the family regards as beneath them, links this book to the next.
Where Gamperaliya showed a village order giving way, Kaliyugaya looks at what follows in the city: a generation born in the village that has broken with it, and children raised in town who share little of their parents' world. Ambition and the pursuit of status, pride of class, the imitation of city ways and the loosening of family ties are at its centre.
Although it is the second book in the story, it was published after Yuganthaya (1949), which concludes the trilogy. Lester James Peries adapted it for the screen as Kaliyugaya, released in 1981-82, with Henry Jayasena and Punya Heendeniya again as Piyal and Nanda; the film was selected for the Directors' Fortnight at Cannes in 1982.
It suits readers who have finished Gamperaliya and want to follow Nanda and Piyal into the next generation.
- Author: Martin Wickramasinghe
- Publisher: Sarasa Publishers
- Published: 1957
- Language: Sinhala
- ISBN: 9789550201389
