Joint Gratiaen 2023 winner, data scientist and misinformation researcher Yudhanjaya Wijeratne

• Joint Gratiaen Prize winner, data scientist and misinformation researcher Yudhanjaya Wijeratne on penning ‘The Wretched and The Damned’

There were a couple of unusual things that happened at the Gratiaen Prize which celebrated its 30th year this year (2023), and one was the selection of joint winners, which has happened before but, nevertheless, is unusual. Yudhanjaya Wijeratne won for his manuscript ‘The Wretched and The Damned’ and Chiranthi Rajapakse for her collection of short stories ‘Keeping Time’. The other unusual feature was that speculative fiction has been added to the expansive genres of literature of the Gratiaen.

The Gratiaen Trust was established by Michael Ondaatje in 1992 with the Booker Prize money he won for ‘The English Patient’. The first Gratiaen Prize was awarded in 1993, also jointly, to Carl Muller and Lalitha Withanachchi. 

This week, Kaleidoscope features Wijeratne who is an author, data scientist, misinformation researcher and Watchdog Co-Founder and Chief Executive Officer. He is in the Forbes ‘30 Under 30’ and his writings have appeared in ‘Wired’, ‘Foreign Policy’ and ‘Slate’. 

Following are excerpts of the interview:

You’ve created history by adding another genre into the works submitted over 30 years at the Gratiaen – speculative fiction. Give me a very quick synopsis of what your manuscript is about?

My manuscript is about a group of super-powered revolutionaries taking down the Sri Lankan State. The idea is that Sri Lanka is incredibly corrupt and nepotistic and that they think that they can do better, just like all the other revolutionaries we’ve seen in this country.

I was thinking about how the country would be destroyed and I thought that I would start by taking down the economy. But, I wrote this in 2021 and everything mostly happened the same way as in the book in the two years since. So, instead of speculative fiction, I’m guilty of journalism.

What brought the subject on?

It was a combination of things. I had released ‘The Salvage Crew’, my fourth novel, and then people were asking me to write something about Sri Lanka. In particular, author and publisher Ameena Hussein kept asking as to when I was going to feature a ‘very Sri Lankan’ book.

When a friend Tilak Dissanayake asked me to write a story about his death (a rather macabre and strange request), I wrote the story but also realised that there’s actually more to this story. The novel just came about, because it was multiple things on top of my mind – our history, economy, and where things were headed. 

At the time, I was working in public policy and much of my work was about trying to interface with the mismanagement in the country, figuring out what was happening, and most of that fell into the story.

Did you ever have an inkling that some or most of your story would come to pass?

No. and I really wish it hadn’t. When I was writing, I looked at the numbers and I figured that the most likely way that this country would tilt would be with job losses, money printing, high prices, and riots on the streets. I was conceptualising what would happen if I was at the helm of it. But, I really didn’t want the speculation to come true and I didn’t expect it to come true. 

What are some of the revelations you came across while writing this?

The first is that I cared more about Sri Lanka than I wanted to admit. For a long time, I divided things I wrote about in my head. I would write about Sri Lanka as a journalist and data scientist – that’s my work at Watchdog and at LIRNEasia. When I write fiction, I explore things that are larger, that resonate more, and are more universal.

In the middle of writing the novel, I realised that I actually had something to say. All of what I’d learnt from my global experiences was pushing at the back of my mind, urging me to put it down. 

Many people are going to be incredibly unhappy about this book, but it should be said and I realised that I had things to say about Sri Lanka. 

Does your book have a message?

I’m going to keep silent on this and let the readers figure it out. 

Who is your protagonist?

There are several – in fact, there are eight first person perspectives. One of the early pieces of advice most authors are given is not to have multiple first person perspectives, because it’s quite difficult for people to understand. I’m now four books in and thought that I have enough skills to write multiple first person perspectives. I decided to push the boundary as far as I could. 

The main storyline concerns Arumugam, whose name translates to ‘the many faced god’, because he is an unreliable narrator. You don’t necessarily know if he’s telling the truth about his past. There is a significant part of his past where he was an investigative journalist and there’s a suggestion that he was so good at studying the people that he was exposing that he became those people. He takes on their flesh, form, everything, hence, the ‘many faced god’, and often has trouble facing who he is at a given moment. 

What do you think a win like this does for authors of your generation?

There’s a large number of potential authors of my genre who are actively asking about how they can find an agent, turn an idea into a book, and get their work published. I get about 20 to 30 queries per day.

The Gratiaen is immensely valuable as it has made me realise that there are lots of people with stories to tell. This highlights the need for us to reach out to those with stories to share and help them tell their tales.

What is the future for speculative fiction in the current order of literature?

Speculative fiction has always been around. If you look back at the greatest stories, from the epic of Gilgamesh, to king Arthur, to the ‘Mahabharata’, the ‘Ramayana’, local legends, and visions of the future from Arthur C. Clarke, speculative fiction has been a very large canvas that goes all the way back to history and all the way to the future. Present day literature is an infinitely thin slice in the middle. 

Speculative fiction has had a fantastic past and will have a fantastic future. The world is paying more attention to those who look at something and ask, ‘What if this was different?’. There is also an increasing need for people to imagine their futures and I’m seeing this constantly, even in conversations among policymakers. 

This is your fifth novel. What did you find different in the process of your other writings and this?

Every novel is different, and sometimes, they’re absolute hell to write. I rewrote ‘The Inhuman Peace’ four times and I was a year-and-a-half behind the deadline. I just wasn’t happy with it for a long time. But, this novel was surprisingly easy. I think that this is because it had thoughts that I would have wanted to say in non-fiction.

This book just began pouring out. I started writing it to take a break from other novels, but it just kept flowing. I couldn’t actually focus on anything else and couldn’t stop until it was done. 

Career-wise, you are a fact checker, a misinformation researcher, and data scientist. How does this tie into your fictional writing?

I’m quite an ADHD (attention deficit hyperactivity disorder) and as a result of that, I find it very difficult to focus on one thing at a time. Having many things to work on gives me many interests and that input and interest in the world always comes back to the fiction. 

Right now, my involvement is with the Right to Information, the Criminal Investigations Department, lots of District Courts, and prisons, in search of a particular story, but all this finds its way into my fiction. It’s a virtual cycle. The downside is that I’m always strapped for time, which makes people think that I’m a hermit. Not so. I just have about 50 things to do within a limited time.

What’s next?

Of the two novels that I’m writing, one is about a giant orange cat, based on a short story that I wrote. That short story is on its way to the moon, in a project meant to archive the works of 30,000 artistes on the moon. I have three works including an anthology that I edited, a very cyberpunk near future look at policing, and a story about a giant orange cat. 

Any words of wisdom to young writers?

Sit down and write. Finish the book. The fancy typewriter doesn’t matter, waiting for the perfect moment doesn’t matter because there’s no perfect ‘who’ that will make you better. Read and write as much as possible. Have patience because there’s a period in which you are still learning your craft. Don’t be disheartened. It can always be rewritten and edited and there’s always a next book. 

(The writer is the host, director, and co-producer of the weekly digital programme ‘Kaleidoscope with Savithri Rodrigo’ which can be viewed on YouTube, Facebook, Instagram, and LinkedIn. She has over three decades of experience in print, electronic, and social media.)