‘The Glass Palace’ travels to Sri Lanka

While crisscrossing the globe on diplomatic postings, there is one trusted companion Niluka Kadurugamuwa never forgets to take along — his books. Growing up in Diyatalawa town in Badulla, located in Sri Lanka’s scenic hill country, Kadurugamuwa began reading Sinhala translations of European, American and Russian writing, mostly fiction. “They would pay some 500 rupees, and that was big money for a student in the mid-1990s.” Kadurugamuwa’s interest in world politics and languages led him to Masters’ degrees in International Affairs and Languages, and eventually to Sri Lanka’s foreign service in 2003. Over the years, he has translated Columbian writer Gabriel Garcia Márquez’s novel In Evil Hour, Turkish novelist Orhan Pamuk’s The Red-haired Woman, Chilean writer Isabel Allende’s Island Beneath the Sea, American author Mario Puzo’s Six Graves To Munich, and fellow Sri Lankan writer Manel Abhayaratne’s novella Maya — in addition to several short stories — traversing genres such as crime, historical fiction and magic realism. And then I bought a third copy when I was posted to New Delhi this time, and actually sat down with it,” says the writer-diplomat, who has won Sri Lanka’s State Literary Award for the best translation twice.