Seek the Singing Fish

At the moment Epoque Press are having an excellent run. A few months ago the superlative Ghosts of Spring was published and before that the elegantly written The Passing of Forms that we have Loved , the beautifully brutal The Beasts they Turned Away and both What Willow Says and The Nacullians made......more

This is a coming-of-age tale in Sri Lanka, about a girl obsessed with knowledge of the natural world, who grows up to face extreme hardship, during a civil war that has torn the country her family apart. There are three parts, each very distinct. Nature writing is predominate in the first half and d......more

Grief and hope are not locked in an either or set up, they are as intertwined and symbiotic as the ants in the gal karandha plant that appa so loved. They are the beautiful blue Ceylon magpie with its head dipped dirty red. They are the rainfall that comes both wrecking and nourishing, the waves tha......more

An epic journey and an epic novel. Bravo!......more

The selling point of this novel, and certainly where it is the strongest, is in its focus on and reverence for the non-human world of living creatures that exists mostly overlooked all around us. The book’s protagonist, Artemila, finds refuge in this world while growing up amid civil war in Sri Lank......more