The Book
Jayathupala can read the forest, its creatures and their secrets better than anyone can. Orphaned and unlettered, the animals, insects and trees in the forest are his friends and teachers. A Chinaman who keeps bees employs the homeless youth to guard his hives from the marauding monkeys and a bear who occasionally visits the village of bees for a bribe. Jayathupala leads a solitary life, preferring the company of animals to his fellow workers. A long stave with gnarled knots that he finds in the forest, and christens Getarita, becomes his soulmate and helps him keep the monkeys, and loneliness, at bay.
When a young woman, a graduate, comes to work at the bee farm, Jayathupala’s life changes. Unlike others, Pabasara does not look at him with pity or contempt. She tells Jayathupala to listen to the bees, for they will teach him a secret and powerful language. She shows him the many similarities between the lives of the bees and those of the workers who toil for the Chinaman in his village of bees. Together, as Jayathupala and Pabasara climb the green, mist-covered hills, they dream of fighting for the bees and workers and setting them free.
Beneath its understated, deceptively simple language and fable-like lyricism, Hum is a layered and powerful social, political and philosophical allegory. Yet it can also be read as a simple, poignant story of love, self-realisation and awakening. Aditha Dissanayake’s luminous translation of this masterpiece by one of the most widely read and important voices in Sri Lanka today evokes a magical yet deeply real world that is at once familiar and enigmatic.
The Author(s)
The author
Batuwangala Rahula is a Sri Lankan Buddhist monk, a powerful orator, social critic and one of the most preeminent writers and thinkers of Sri Lanka today. Known for his acclaimed allegorical novels, such as Borathel (2008), Ran Karanduwa (2015), and Gum (2018), that reflect on the social, political, cultural landscape of Sri Lanka and explore themes like power, greed, faith, post-war Lanka, transitoriness and time, often using surrealism, Rahula enjoys a large and devoted readership both in and outside his country. Ran Karanduwa, the story of a Buddhist monk’s pilgrimage to the four sacred sites in India related to the Buddha’s life, won the prestigious Swarna Pusthaka Award given by the Publisher’s Association of Sri Lanka for best Sinhala novel. Rahula also won the national award for the best novel and collection of short stories.
The translator
Aditha Dissanayake is a Sri Lankan writer, journalist, and a translator who works between Sinhala and English. Her published fictions include Somewhere in the Green Hills (2013), a novel tracing the history of tea in Sri Lanka; When a Cloud Left the Sky (2017), an exploration of post-war Sri Lankan society; and 10.34 (2021) that highlights the urgency of ecological conservation, and won the S. Godage Award (2022) for best English novel. Her translations include The Age of Kali by Martin Wickremasinghe, which won the 2014 State Literature Award for best translation; and Golden Casket by Batuwangala Rahula, which won the prestigious H.A.I. Goonetileke Prize for Literary Translation (2015–2016) given by The Gratien Trust, founded by Sri Lankan-born Canadian novelist and Booker Prize winner Michael Ondaatje.