Martin Wickramasinghe

Who is Martin Wickramasinghe?

Martin Wickramasinghe, born Lama Hewage Don Martin Wickramasinghe on 29 May 1890 in the coastal village of Koggala, is widely regarded as the father of modern Sinhala literature. Leaving school after only a few years of formal education, he moved to Colombo as a teenager to find work and largely educated himself through wide reading. He began his career as a journalist in 1920, eventually becoming an editor for the Lake House newspaper group's Sinhala publications, the Dinamina and the Sunday Silumina. His literary reputation rests chiefly on the novel Gamperaliya, published in 1944, which portrayed the slow collapse of a traditional southern Sri Lankan village family under the pressure of colonial-era modernization and commercial change, and is considered the first Sinhala novel to achieve serious international literary standing. He continued the story in two further novels, Kaliyugaya and Yuganthaya, forming a trilogy that traced the transformation of Sri Lankan society across three generations. Gamperaliya was adapted into an acclaimed 1963 film by director Lester James Peries that won international awards, including the Indian Golden Peacock Award. Wickramasinghe was appointed a Member of the Order of the British Empire in 1953 and continued writing fiction, essays, and cultural criticism until his death in 1976.

Sources: Wikipedia, "Martin Wickramasinghe" · DESIblitz, "Martin Wickramasinghe ~ Writer of Culture and Life" · NextTravelSriLanka, "Martin Wickramasinghe, the Greatest Author from Sri Lanka"