Funny Boy

By Shyam Selvadurai

Arjie is "funny." The second son of a privileged family in Sri Lanka, he prefers staging make-believe weddings pageants with his female cousins to batting balls with the other boys. When his parent discover his innocent pastime, Arjie is forced to abandon his idyllic childhood games and adopt the rigid rules of an adult world. Bewildered by his incipient sexual awakening and mortified by the bloody Tamil-Sinhalese conflicts that threaten to tear apart his homeland, Arjie painfully grows toward manhood an an understanding of his own "different" identity. 

As refreshing, raw, and poignant today as it was when it was first published over twenty-five years ago, Funny Boy is an exquisitely written, compassionate tale of a boy's coming-of-age that quietly confounds expectations of love, family, and country as it deliver the powerful message of staying true to one's self no matter the obstacles.