A Sinhala novel written for young readers, by Shanthi Dissanayake. The whole book is in Sinhala — there is no English text in it — so it will suit a reader who is comfortable in the language, or a household keeping Sinhala reading alive abroad.
The title is a child's word. A small girl, not yet old enough to get her mouth around loku amma, says kumma instead. The author has described hearing that — and the mixture of affection and delight it set off in her — as what moved her to write the novel, and that feeling carries through the book.
Writing for an adolescent readership, as the publisher puts it, asks for a real sense of what young people think and want, and Dissanayake is an experienced hand at it. Kumma belongs to the Sinhala young adult tradition rather than to children's picture books: a novel, written to be read straight through by a reader old enough to follow one.
It is published by M. D. Gunasena & Co. (Pvt) Ltd, a Colombo house with a long presence in Sinhala and English publishing and in Sri Lankan educational and general books.
Worth considering if you are building a Sinhala-language shelf for a teenager, if you teach or stock Sinhala fiction outside Sri Lanka, or if you read Sinhala yourself and want contemporary work for young readers rather than reprints of older titles.
- Author: ශාන්ති දිසානායක,
- Publisher: M. D. Gunasena & Co. (Pvt) Ltd
- Language: Sinhala
- ISBN: 9789552130366
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