In writing, I try to find the right balance between momentum and infinity, truth and beauty.

My writing has been shaped by the three countries - Sri Lanka, the Philippines and England - I have lived in.

Sri Lanka is a part of my background: it's not where I live, but it's what I want to explore. And I find it works very well to explore through fiction.

I find anonymous music frees me best. Chinese pop can be perfect. I can't decipher anything on the CD label; there is nothing I can hang on to.

In the sense that writing is to retrieve the past and stop the passing of time, all writing is about loss. It's not nostalgia in the sense of yearning to bring back the past, but recognition of the erosion of things as you live.

Every Sri Lankan, and almost every visitor to Sri Lanka, carries a longing for the place in some small form - hiraeth, the Welsh call it - wherever they go and whatever their background. It binds them however much the war and politics might try to divide them.