Selvadurai creates immersive, visceral worlds you can almost reach out and feel. It helps to have other projects underway to provide a buffer from the anxiety surrounding the launch, in this case a children’s fantasy novel “using mythological characters from those old Buddhist stories” - a theme he’s embracing more these days. “When we read … we picture the characters in a certain way, we picture the landscape in a certain way.” And then the moment it’s (launched) it ceases to be really mine, it becomes more the reader’s,” the Canadian-Sri Lankan writer told me in an interview from his Toronto home. “I work in such an isolated, solitary way. Perhaps one of the most radical and important aspects of the book is the descriptions of brown bodies and skin – written by a brown author- especially in contrast to the whiteness of mainstream gay sex stories.While the occasion of a new book from Shyam Selvadurai creates excitement among readers, it causes some anxiety for him. You are basically fresh meat,” Selvadurai says. “It’s a rite of passage – the first gay experience is terrible.

Shivan’s sexual experiences are all written with tenderness and nuance, even the negative early experiences. Also, he is differently gay because he is part of a modern-day gay ethos – he comes out, he’s in gay environments, he has a spouse.” I always start with the assumption that the protagonist is gay.” However, unlike Arjie, Shivan’s desires extend beyond childhood curiosity. Selvadurai explains that because he is gay, his rule is “if the character can be, then let them be gay.

And then of course, there is absolute terror of the weather.”Īs Shivan wrestles with reconciling his past and trying to find forgiveness for his mother and grandmother, he and his family must also bear the harsh realities of immigrant life, the devastating discovery that a new home is not without its own challenges. So when you arrive, coming from a culture where there is a lot of street life and a lot of easy contact between human beings all the time, you feel parched, you feel thirsty. “I really felt it was important to write about the Canada I came to,” Selvadurai says, noting he had not yet explored this experience in his writing. The need to escape his grandmother propels Shivan and his family to move to Toronto.

The hungry ghosts by shyam selvadurai