Lankan Aphrodisiac

Carl Muller talks to Lankan journalist and poet Afdhel Aziz about his critics, his upcoming books and dinner parties at the end of the world.

How do you cope with the critics?

Who is qualified critic that yo know, who can take your book and look at it as a critic and write either charitably or uncharitably about it? Who has come through a school of criticism? Who has got diploma is literary criticism, right? When an author writes a book, invariably, the author send a copy to the newspaper, who calls the sub-editor or a reporter and says: "Here, I,ve got this book. Review it." And bang comes review.

Are you saying that the best criticism comes from a layman?

The best criticism is the type of letters that come from the readers – the people who have read the book. They can say what they like. Now, I´ve had so many people who read the The Jam Fruit Tree. They sent their letters through the editor. There were letters that damned me, that cursed me. One man even said I´m not even a Burgher. "With that name, he must be some German." OK fine, but the truth of the books was that I celebrated the Burghers. I celebrated their weddings, their funerals, their Christmas feasts, everything. I wanted to show the life that was not being publicly shown to anybody; the real way the Burghers lived. The way they fornicated, the way they died. I did everything possible to show them that they were a unique culture, and the people who could live together with everybody, which is why in The Jam Fruit Tree I made the observation that while the other buggers are throwing bombs at each other, we Burghers are getting on without any problems.