Ruins

n the pent-up heat of Colombo, piece by piece, a family comes apart.A stunning debut novel from a fresh voice in Australian fiction, for fans of Zadie Smith and Rohinton Mistry.'Ruins is a stirring and skilfully crafted debut, and Savanadasa's characters are so vividly drawn they feel like family. With his sharp and masterful observations of race, class and gender in the "new" Sri Lanka, Savanadasa takes his seat beside Omar Musa, Alice Pung and Michael Mohammed Ahmad to usher in the brave and stunning new dawn of diverse Australian fiction.' Maxine Beneba Clarke, author of Foreign SoilA country picking up the pieces, a family among the ruins...In the restless streets, crowded waiting rooms and glittering nightclubs of Colombo, five family members find their bonds stretched to breaking point in the aftermath of the Sri Lankan civil war.Latha wants a home. Anoushka wants an iPod.Mano hopes to win his wife back.Lakshmi dreams of rescuing a lost boy.And Niranjan needs big money so he can leave them all behind.As the five leave Colombo to travel to an ancient city, the generations collide and long-held prejudices surface. With one foot in the old way of life and one firmly in the new, this family can never be what it once was.'A rich and colourful story of family and country, its complexity revealed in layers . . . Only through the eyes of others can we begin to see a place.' Inga Simpson, author of Mr Wigg and Nest.