Our discussion with Gratiaen Prize-winning author Fidel!

The 18th of May was truly a memorable day for all of us in the SEPL Book Club. Why? It’s because we all got to meet Andrew Fidel Fernando, the author of the truly exceptional book, ‘Upon a Sleepless Isle’.

This is a travelogue capturing all of the experiences Fidel faced during the journey. The way in which Fidel has described each situation has a unique taste of humor.’ ‘Upon a Sleepless Isle’ is the kind of book that a reader can read without getting bored from the first page to the very last and yet get the urge to read the book throughout once again.

What makes this book so wholesome? When living in Sri Lanka there are some social experiences that we cannot avoid such as the shenanigans of government sectors. All of this was a part of this book, just how we remembered it from our experience firsthand. No doubt each of us in the book club enjoyed the book to a whole new level while discussing it and this made us even more excited to meet Fidel.

We had many questions lingering in our minds and we were waiting for answers. Fidel answered all of them. One of us asked, “Do you still have contact with the fisherman?” He chuckled “Well I don’t—I don’t think they want to be in contact either after their experience fishing with me.”

We spoke about more than just the book. We learned many extra fun facts about Sri Lanka as well. None of us knew the origin of the music genre ‘Baila’ but now we do. This is just one of the many things we learned from our meeting with Fidel.

As an author, he talked about his journey of how he fell into the field of writing and about his career as a cricket journalist. This built up motivation for some of us to continue writing and to think about how we could come up with the best version of our original stories. Fidel is truly a wonderful author who is humble and perfectly understands the minds of the readers.

Dulithi Jayasinghe

SEPL Book Club Student