The characters and setting are established in a measured, finely judged manner, allowing us to feel at home with them. this is, in many ways, an old-fashioned novel, brimming with old-fashioned virtues. In a parallel narrative, her uncle, Balendran Navaratnam, respectably married but secretly homosexual, has his life disrupted by the arrival in Ceylon of Richard, a lover from long ago. Among them is Annalukshmi, an independent and high-spirited young teacher intent on thwarting her parents' plans to arrange her marriage. In Shyam Selvadurai's masterful second novel, set in repressive and complex 1920s Ceylon, the Cinnamon Gardens is a residential enclave of wealthy Ceylonese. “Richly rewarding… This is a novel that deserves, and will surely gain, a wide readership.Selvadurai has captured horrifyingly well the airlessness of a society in which only a few are truly able to breathe, and deeply' Mary Loudon, The Times “Selvadurai’s nuanced prose evokes the country’s dense climate and lush beauty.”

“Subtle and deeply humane… Shyam Selvadurai has established himself firmly as an important chronicler of the complexities of social and cultural difference…” “Faultlessly elegant… Selvadurai is expert in capturing the nuances of this particularly precious time and place.” “A near-miraculous capturing of life and love (both gay and straight), family tensions, political upheaval, labour unrest and feminism in the Ceylon of the 1920s…” Shortlisted for the Aloa Literary Award (Denmark), 1999 Reviews

Shortlisted for the Premio Internazionale Riccardo Bacchelli (Italy), 1999 Verlag Kiepenheuer & Witsch, Germany, 2000 It also capture brilliantly the sadness, frustration and despair of married gay men-a phenomenon all too common in so many parts of the world. The novel explores religious, political, historical, and cultural controversies of the time which laid the foundation for what ended up happening later in Sri Lanka.

Their uneasy reunion re-ignites tensions with Balendran’s powerful father, and threatens everything on which Balendran has built his present life. Then there is her uncle, Balendran, whose comfortable life of privilege is rocked by the arrival of Richard, a lover from his past in England. The novel has 2 protagonists: Annalukshmi, a spirited young schoolteacher and early feminist, who finds herself caught between her family’s pressures to marry and her own desire for a more independent life. Set in 1920s’ Sri Lanka, during the turbulent closing days of colonial rule, Cinnamon Gardens takes the reader behind the fragrant gardens and polished surfaces of the elite who reside in a wealthy suburb of Cinnamon Gardens in Colombo to reveal a world of splintered families, conflicted passions, and lives destroyed by class hatred.

Cinnamon gardens by shyam selvadurai