Book signing of Chhimi Tenduf-La’s ‘Loyal Stalkers’ tomorrow at Barefoot

Friday, 23 June 2017 00:00 - - {{hitsCtrl.values.hits}}

Since its launch late last month, Loyal Stalkers, a collection of absorbing short stories by Chhimi Tenduf-La, has earned consistently excellent reviews. Catch News cites the book’s ‘Wonderfully crafted characters that walk in singularly with their stories and then reappear perhaps as a face in the crowd.... the salty sea breeze, the smattering of Sinhalese and bits of Tamil, that craze for cricket, a heady whiff of arrack and an insatiable longing for life – makes it uniquely Sri Lankan’.

While Scroll praises Tenduf-La’s meticulously crafted stories and exploration of ‘the nuances in relationships and the dynamics of human emotions of the island dwellers...while he writes about grimness, he ensures they are interwoven in a narrative crackling with terse energy’.

Loyal Stalker has been chosen by Amazon India as one of its picks for the best of international fiction for the summer of 2017. “With the summer holidays coming up,” says Tenduf-La, “I hope people would want to pick up signed copies to gift to friends overseas, so that they get a flavour of Sri Lanka. One reviewer said it was the perfect holiday, flight or beach read because it is a collection of quick-paced linked short stories. Please do feel free to ask me questions, or fix me up to visit your book clubs.” Nazreen Sansoni of Barefoot added that the signing would be a good opportunity to have a chat with Tenduf-La; “We hear he is extremely amusing.”

Edgy yet tender, racy yet warm, the interlinked stories in Loyal Stalkers take readers 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.

The book signing will take place on Saturday 24 June from 12 noon to 4 p.m. at the Barefoot Bookshop, 704, Galle Road, Colombo 3.