Kaliyugaya (English)

කලියුගය – Kaliyugaya The Age of Kali
Translated by Ranga Wickramasinghe & Aditha Dissanayake

Kaliyugaya is the second Part of Martin Wickramasinghe’s Uprooted trilogy consisting of Gamperaliya, Kaliyugaya and Yuganthaya.

‘The Story in Kali Yuganthaya is built round the disharmony, the loss of sympathy , and the loosening of ties among three generations, the generation in the village – Nanda’s mother, Piyal’s mother, and those like tissa and Anula – who at heart are part of the village; the next generation – Nanda and Piyal – who, born and the village, have broken with it and come to the city; and Finally their children, born in the city and directed away from the village. The novel has a neat formal structure which bespeaks an easy and natural skill in the craft of fiction There are three centres of action in the novel which represent the three centres of values, the three interacting worlds. There is the old village of koggala with its dilapidated ancestral home; the “Maha Gedara”, symbolic of the neglected past; there is the modern home in Mutwal with its well equipped comfort. Its hybrid sophisticated life;and across the sea,which it faces, lies England from where Alan writes,And where Alan goes as though he is driven to seek reality ,the living source from which his parents derived their pale and awkward imitations.’

-Godfrey Gunathilake