**The internationally celebrated (and Booker Prize-shortlisted) author
returns with a dazzling coming-of-age story set in post-independence Sri
Lanka
A master storyteller.
--*The New York Times
***Ceylon is on the brink of change. But young Kairo is at loose ends.
School is closed, the government is in disarray, the press is under
threat, and the religious right are flexing their muscles. Kairo's
hardworking mother blows off steam at her cha-cha-cha classes; his
Trotskyist father grumbles over the state of the nation between his
secret bets on horse races in faraway England. All Kairo wants to do is
hide in his room and flick through secondhand 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 budding naturalist and a born rebel, Jay keeps fish and traps birds
for an aviary he is building in the garden of his grand home. As Jay
guides Kairo from the realm of make-believe into one of hunting guns and
fast cars and introduces him to a girl-- Niromi--Kairo begins to
understand the price of privilege and embarks on a journey of
devastating consequence.
Taut and luminous, graceful and wild, Suncatcher is a poignant
coming-of-age novel about difficult friendships and sudden awakenings
set among the tumult of 1960s Sri Lanka, that confirms Gunesekera's
status as one of today's most lyrical writers.
