‘Loyal Stalkers’: Chhimi Tenduf-La launches third book

In a private room sheltered from the Colombo riots, a 17-year-old girl gives birth to a hate child. At a modern city gym, an introverted fitness instructor obsesses over his unattainable client. Inside an untended guest-house room, an adolescent cricket champ is caught unawares by his coach’s violent fury. By a rain-drenched gravesite, a special-needs teacher confides in a stranger. 

This is the world that awaits readers of Chhimi Tenduf-La’s third offering ‘Loyal Stalkers’. A collection of short stories, Loyal Stalkers is eagerly anticipated following the critical and commercial success of the author’s ‘The Amazing Racist and Panther’.  

A collection of infinite brio and charm, Loyal Stalkers finds Chhimi Tenduf-La at his inventive best. “Another author who read it told me that it was like a painting coming to life with each chapter filling in the colours of one other corner of that painting. There is a message about society in each tale, but my hope, above all else, is that people will find the book compelling, moving and surprising,” says Chhimi.

Edgy yet tender, racy yet warm, these interlinked stories take us into the unfamiliar everyday of Sri Lankan living, where smugglers, waiters, single moms and cheaters cross paths as they attempt to negotiate a web of shock, subterfuge and irony. Nayomi Munaweera calls Tenduf-La, ‘One of the island’s greatest chroniclers … These are stories both sordid and sweet that gathered together pack a hefty punch’ while Sandip Roy says the book is ‘A sexy roller coaster of a ride with dizzying twists and turns through high and low society in Sri Lanka...Sardonic, hard-boiled, achingly vulnerable … a book about love, lust and loss meeting in headlong collision’.

Published by Pan Macmillan India, Loyal Stalkers will be released in Sri Lanka to coincide with the official launch elsewhere. The book is expected to be available in all leading Sri Lankan bookstores before the end of May 2017.

Diya Kar Hazra, former Publisher at Pan Macmillan India who commissioned the book said, “Chhimi has a strong, assured voice; distinct and unusual. His stories bring alive the fabric of Sri Lankan life and living: Boyhood and cricket, sex and sexuality, power and the politics of power, and violence. He captures the dichotomies and ironies of the country perfectly.”

Chhimi Tenduf-La’s first book, ‘The Amazing Racist’, was one of the bestsellers across Sri Lanka in 2015. It enjoyed time on Hachette India’s bestseller list and received glowing reviews in the Indian Press. His second book, ‘Panther’, reaped similar praise.

Loyal Stalkers will be available at Barefoot, Vijitha Yapa, Trunk Cinnamon Grand, Makeens, Odel, Jeya, Sarasavi, MD Gunesena, Expographics and Butter Boutique. It can also be pre-ordered on Takas.lk with a significant discount. Once the book is released, Takas will offer same day delivery within Colombo.