 Shyam Selvadurai was born in 1965 in Colombo, Sri Lanka. For years, Sri Lanka's Tamil minority and Sinhalese majority have clashed over issues of power-sharing and local autonomy. This political unrest resulted in violent riots in the city of Colombo in 1983, and it was after these riots that the Selvadurai family immigrated to Canada. Selvadurai's first novel, Funny Boy, was published in 1994 and received the W.H. Smith/Books in Canada First Novel Award. Set in Sri Lanka prior to the riots, Funny Boy is a story of young boy's passage to adolescence and maturity, during a time of growing political unrest. His second novel, Cinnamon Gardens, was published in 1998. Meticulously researched, the story revolves largely around two characters, Annalukshmi and Balendran, and their quest for self-knowledge against the political and historical backdrop of 1920s Ceylon (Sri Lanka). Both novels reflect Selvadurai's concern about the political and societal realities of Sri Lanka, and the challenges and triumphs that ordinary people face as a consequence. Selvadurai identifies his experiences as an immigrant to Canada as part of the reason he is able to write so capably and compellingly of his home country.
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