A Sinhala-language book from Godage International Publishers, written by the journalist Nandasena Suriyaarachchi. Readers who do not read Sinhala should know that before ordering: the text is in Sinhala throughout.
Its subject is Maduwanwela Maha Disawa — Sir James Williams Maduwanwela — a headman of the colonial period who was appointed Disava by the British administration and whose seat was the Maduwanwela Walawwa in Sabaragamuwa. The walawwa itself remains one of the better-known manor houses of the up-country and low-country frontier, and the man associated with it has long been a figure of local memory in the Kolonna area as much as of formal record.
Suriyaarachchi was born in Baddegama and graduated from the University of Kelaniya before entering journalism at Lake House. He spent years on the editorial staff of Dinamina and Silumina, then helped to establish Divaina and worked there for a long further stretch. His writing ranged across political commentary, arts coverage and feature work, and he was the author of many books. Among his newspaper series were pieces published under the heading "Maduwanwela Maha Disawa", alongside others on Kondadeniye Hamuduruwo, Upali Wijewardene and Sir John Kotelawala — biographical subjects drawn from Sri Lankan public life of the colonial and post-independence decades. He died in 2023.
That body of work gives a sense of the register. Suriyaarachchi wrote for a general newspaper readership rather than an academic one, treating Sri Lankan lives as material for sustained feature writing, and he returned to figures whose names are familiar in Sinhala conversation but whose circumstances are less often set down at length.
This will interest readers following Sri Lankan biographical writing in Sinhala, those with a particular attachment to Sabaragamuwa and the Maduwanwela Walawwa, and anyone building a shelf of Godage's Sinhala non-fiction. It is a slim volume rather than a scholarly study, and it belongs with the popular biographical and historical titles that have long formed part of Sinhala publishing.
For buyers outside Sri Lanka, books of this kind are often difficult to find once a printing has moved through the local market, and Sinhala-language titles rarely appear in catalogues abroad.
- Author: Nandasena Suriyarachchi
- Publisher: Godage International Publishers
- Language: Sinhala
- Pages: 88
- ISBN: 9789553079077
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