Cinnamon Gardens

By Shyam Selvadurai

Set in 1920s’ Ceylon, during the turbulent closing days of colonial rule, this evocative story of intertwined lives takes us behind the fragrant gardens and polished surfaces of the elite who reside in a wealthy suburb of Colombo to reveal a world of splintered families, conflicted passions, and lives destroyed by class hatred. Annalukshmi, a spirited young schoolteacher, finds herself caught between her family’s pressures to marry and her own desire for a more independent life. Then there is her uncle Balendran, whose comfortable life of privilege is rocked by the arrival of Richard, a lover from his past. Their uneasy reunion re-ignites tensions with Balendran’s powerful father, and threatens all on which Balendran has built his present life. Sensual, perceptive, and wise, Cinnamon Gardens is a novel of exceptional achievement—an exquisite tapestry of lives.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Random House Publishing Group
• Release date: Dec 4, 2012
• ISBN: 9781551997186

Shyam Selvadurai

Shyam Selvadurai was born in Colombo, Sri Lanka. Funny Boy, his first novel, won the W.H. Smith/ Books in Canada First Novel Award and the Lambda Literary Award in the United States. He is the author of Cinnamon Gardens and Swimming in the Monsoon Sea, and the editor of an anthology, Story-wallah! A Celebration of South Asian Fiction. His books have been published in the United States, United Kingdom, and India, and in translation.

Reviews for Cinnamon Gardens

[eargent_2 · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

I loved this book.

[poodlerat · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

Cinnamon Gardens is Shyam Selvadurai’s second novel, set in 1920’s Ceylon (modern-day Sri Lanka), a country still under British colonial rule. The book narrates one year from the lives of members of a wealthy Tamil family living in Cinnamon Gardens, one of Colombo’s most affluent suburbs. Particularly two of its members: Annalukshmi, a young teacher unsure of whether she is willing to reject all offers of marriage in order to continue in her beloved profession, and her uncle Balendran, who himself gave up his lover and married in order to please his father.Populated with very sympathetic, believable characters, many of whom I would be pleased to encounter in real life. Family members who don’t always understand each other but have affection and respect for each other anyway lend the story a sharp realism. Descriptions of Colombo under the British are many and vivid, without ever becoming tedious or intrusive. I'm especially fond of the two main characters, Annalukshmi and Balendran, and I was sad to leave them when the book ended. The story doesn’t really invite a sequel, but I wish there was one anyway.

[thorold_1 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

Cinnamon Gardens is set, like its predecessor Funny boy, in and around Colombo, but some fifty years earlier, in 1927, with a British commission about to visit the island to make proposals for self- government. The central characters are members of a prominent Tamil family, living in the eponymous up-market suburb, which takes its name from a former plantation. Balendran is worried by the arrival of the commission, as accompanying it will be his former lover Richard. They lived together for a while in London when they were both young, but Balendran's father, the Mudaliyar Navaratnam, broke up the relationship, threatening to denounce Richard to the police. In the mean time, Balendran has married his cousin Sonia, and they have a son who is studying in England. Balendran remains afraid of his father, and still slips out at night to meet men at a local cruising spot. His niece Annalukshmi, the other main character, is a young woman at odds with her family's plans to marry her off, and heavily influenced by Miss Lawton, headmistress of the school where she teaches. There, one might say, are all the familiar elements from Funny boy: return of old flame, charismatic head-teacher, rebellious, intelligent young woman, family tangles and all the complexities of communitarian politics in the colonial world. However, the style is very different, Selvadurai has clearly moved on, and this is a mature and serious novel. Balendran's homosexuality is important, but it is not in itself the key to what is going on - the novel is really about his relationship with his father, and the way that he eventually breaks out of the blackmail that his father has used ever since discovering the relationship with Richard.(A review I wrote for a newsletter in 1999 and rediscovered in the archive)