Dr Chandani Lokuge
BA MA (Sri Lanka) Ph.D (Flinders)
Senior Lecturer
Director of Centre for Postcolonial Writing
Postgraduate Coordinator, Creative Writing
- Full Curriculum Vitae
(PDF)
Background
Dr Chandani Lokuge is the Founder Director of the Centre for Postcolonial Writing, Coordinator of the Creative Writing programme, and a Senior Lecture in English. She holds the degree of Master of Arts from the University of Peradeniya, Sri Lanka, and read for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy, as a Commonwealth Scholar, at Flinders University, South Australia.
She is the author of 9 books including the two novels, If the moon smiled (Penguin) and Turtle Nest (Penguin) and Moth and Other Stories (Aarhus). As the Editor for Oxford University Press of the Classic Reissue Series, she has published 6 scholarly editions of Indian women’s writing in English and has played a leading role in developing international research in this area. As Editor of international publications such as Annotated Bibliography of English Studies (Routledge), Empire On-Line (Adam Matthews), and Guest Co-Editor of special issues of Meanjin and NLR, she makes further substantial contribution to research in postcolonial literary studies. Her short fiction and scholarly essays are widely anthologised.
Research Interests in creativity and scholarship
As a creative writer, my themes reflect our search for vishranti (true restfulness) in the restless world of travel and migration. My third novel titled, The Caves of Infinite Buddhas (in progress) is set in Australia and Sri Lanka.
My current scholarly research engages with the aesthetic and philosophical dimensions of the South Asian diasporic literature written in English. Titled, Rasa and the Aesthetics of Desire in South Asian Diasporic Literatures, the project is inspired by authors such as Salman Rushdie, V S Naipaul and Michael Ondaatje. Focusing on desire as the central dynamic source of energy that drives their creativity, I explore the poetics: the forms, genres, strategies and interests – through which these authors articulate their desire, by the application to it of the classical Indian theory of aesthetics, the theory of Rasa.
This research project is a lateral development of my long-time research in and editing of Oxford University Press’ Classic Reissues Series. In this research I focussed on the negotiation by the authors of the cross-cultural complexities and nuances of the Indo-European encounter. I addressed questions about belonging; how far the authors and their writing illuminate the emergence of an imperial, and later postcolonial, modernity; and what their hybrid literary identities mean in today’s global context.
The Centre for Postcolonial Writing that I founded in 2002 has grown into a major research strength of the English Section and School, and a stimulating forum for the exchange of creative and intellectual inquiry. The Centre offers postgraduate research degrees in both literary critique and creative writing, scholar residencies, occasional scholarships, and has presented several major international research activities including Homi Bhabha’s visit and lecture in Melbourne in 2004, the Monash/Calcutta conference in 2006, and the continuing editorships of the Annotated Bibliography of English Studies and Empire On-Line.
Selected Publications
Creative Writing
Turtle Nest
A poignant and beguiling story. The Age
Lokuge’s prose is languid, it’s almost slow motion. The effect is of swimming through deep, dark, clogged water. Her expert prose is drenched with imagery, the moot is hot and sea-salty, faintly threatening. We waft with Aruni day after seeming endless day as she delves further and further, scrap by tantalising scrap, into the truth. The powerful ending, at night, on the beach, amid sea-tossed coconuts with kernels ‘as soft as a woman’s sex’ is no less shocking for its inevitability. The Australian
‘It is essentially a story of family secrets and illicit sex. But it is told with such restraint and subtlety that it operates as a moving generational story of bereavement, desire and discovery that builds inevitably towards Aruni’s brutal awakening. Its shocking conclusion is emblematic of the tensions beneath Sri Lanka’s seductive beauty.’ The Sydney Morning Herald
If the moon smiled
Short-listed for the NSW Premier’s Prize, 2001, ‘Best Book’ category; Translated into Greek, 2001
The writer’s lyrical imagery is breathtaking… Lokuge’s words dance and cry in her pages… If the moon smiled is a brooding, moody, nostalgic and haunting success. The Financial Review
…what a beautifully written, sad and touching story this is… Lokuge writes with poise and a silk smooth touch. The Weekend Australian
The harsh psychological truths of this story are intertwined with Lokuge’s use of the poetic language of Sri Lankan Buddhism. It movingly conveys the tragedy of the migrant generation their children’s success stories leave behind. The Bulletin
Original in conception, subtly ambiguous in its exploration of Manthri’s emotional vulnerability, Chandani Lokuge’s novel is heartbreakingly true to the inner lives of many Sri lankan women ‘at home’ and abroad. The Book Review
… If the moon smiled becomes a study of the pressure between generations as much as the friction of cultural demands. The Australian Review of Books
Chandani Lokuge’s haunting elegy for a particular kind of unexamined life, is moving, unsettling and unfailingly attractive. The writing is consistently beautiful… The Sunday Times (Sri Lanka)
The enduring quality of the novel is its refined understanding and sensitive portrayal of intense emotion. Canberra Sunday Times
Moth and Other Stories
The world of Chandani Lokuge’s short stories is a deceptive and deeply moving blend of the calm and the violent, the sensuous and the sinister. These are powerful, passionate, skilfully crafted stories in which ordinary people struggle to make their lives against the odds. Brian Matthews
These are powerful short tales of life in a society under terrible stress – of betrayal, shame, unbearable debt, lovelessness, violence and even murder. It is dark hued writing but not somehow depressing to read. Robert Dessaix
These stories show deep sensitivity and insight and are relevant not only to the people of Sri Lanka but to so many people today who are trapped by the few in a dehumanising struggle for power. David Dabydeen
Oxford Classic Reissue Series
These new editions of Indian texts in English will force us to re-evaluate the beginnings of Indian writing in English. More topically perhaps, the series will force a re-assessment of the origins of the post-colonial response to British rule in India. In each edition, the editor mines a rich and untapped vein of cultural life in colonised India.
The achievements of such a series is manifold: the discovery of the significance of women in the appropriation of the Western culture by Indian writing; the revelation of the early origins of such appropriation; and the uncovering of a rich historical resource which deconstructs our ideas of literary history. Each edition is comprehensively annotated and rigorously historical but the editor has also situated the texts very astutely in contemporary debates about colonialist representation. Bill Ashcroft
India Calling, Cornelia Sorabji‘s enjoyable autobiography, is an important historical document, which was first published in 1934… This reissue has been edited by Chandani Lokuge who provides a thoughtful introduction examining Sorabji’s political and social mores in the light of theories of colonialism, identity formation and feminist ideology. Times Literary Supplement
