Romesh Gunesekera

The Suncatcher is Romesh Gunesekera’s ninth work of fiction and his tenth book. In it he returns to the era of his first novel and a story of divided loyalties and endangered friendship.

1964. Ceylon is on the brink of change. But Kairo is at a loose end. School is closed, the government is in disarray, the press is under threat and the religious right are flexing their muscles. Kairo's hard-working mother blows off steam at her cha-cha-cha classes; his Trotskyite father grumbles over the state of the nation between his secret flutters on horseraces in faraway England. All Kairo wants to do is hide in his room and flick over second-hand westerns and superhero comics, or escape on his bicycle and daydream.

Then he meets the magnetic teenage Jay, and his whole world is turned inside out.

‘A dreamy, mesmerising story on the displeasures of growing up’

Prospect Magazine

‘A joyous narrative of relationships across the fence … but even when it tugs at the heartstrings, Gunesekera’s elegaic prose has a curiously healing quality’

The Hindu

‘Beautifully created … An enchanting novel in which the author skilfully marries his public theme of political uncertainty and imminent, perhaps alarming, change with the passions of adolescence, and also its languor … The author has created, or more exactly recreated, world in which you are happy to linger, all the more so because you cannot escape an awareness of its fragility.’

Allan Massie, The Scotsman (magazine)

‘A gripping novel about [a] country on the brink … Harking back to the 1960s in a period piece suffused with foreboding, Gunesekera captures the first rumblings of the cataclysm …’

Peter Kemp, Sunday Times

‘The emotional contours … are beautifully chartered’

Mail on Sunday

‘A book … that will keep you awake at night thinking, reliving its experiences, and actually re-examining your own.’

Deccan Herald

Bloomsbury India 1 Nov 2019

Bloomsbury UK 28 Nov 2019

Bloomsbury ANZ 4 Feb 2020

New Press USA 17 March 2020