Word: lankan
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Other English Department instructors were equally enthusiastic about the Sri Lankan author’s lecture...
...poem, which at some 70 pages could be described as an attempt to resurrect the genre of the poetic epic. The shorter works are slight and awkward; Alexander’s fulsome imagery is suffocating in the absence of meaning. It is only in “The Sri Lankan Loxodrome” that he creates a thematic and narrative canvas vast enough to contain his ambition. The result, however, is decidedly...
Alexander provides a glossary at the end, but this covers only the most obscure and technical areas of his vocabulary. As overbearing and unnecessary as his lexical tendencies can be, if they’re at home anywhere, it’s in the narrative monologue of a Sri Lankan sailor, Loxodrome, “whose commission is to de-poison sea snakes / to somehow bottle their arteries in clouds... [his] command / to capture them as beasts / whose colour is aurulent and xanthic.” Throughout, the atmosphere is ethereal; yet the narrator’s fantastical adventures...
...saire, Alexander sometimes goes astray in his characterization of the post-colonial experience, misguidedly evoking a universalized disposition in Africa as in South Asia. He transposes this affinity onto his narrator, who makes the reverse gesture: “I am Mahayana & of Africa / both Sri Lankan & non-Sri Lankan.” Alexander’s uncomplicated humanism is filled with such platitudes...
...report of the DHS interview request comes at a curious time in Sri Lankan politics. Fonseka has been the subject of speculation that he may run against President Rajapaksa in the next election. Some political observers claim that the Rajapaksa brothers are trying to sideline the general, an allegation that the Defense Secretary has denied. "This is nothing but a despicable plot being hatched at the expense of the entire country," Defense Secretary Rajapaksa told a weekend newspaper amid reports of a growing gulf between Fonseka and the government...