Devika Brendon’s novel ‘Aversion’; navigating contemporary Sri Lanka, seeking calm in the storm

Devika Brendon is an academic, teacher, reviewer and editor of English Literature whose first novel ‘Aversion’ was recently published. She is also a creative writer of poetry and prose, and her poems and short stories, and journalistic essays and articles, have been widely published in anthologies and journals in both print and digital media. In this exclusive e-mail interview with the Daily FT, Devika shares a wide array of thoughts, ranging from publishing her novel in multiple formats to her routine as an author.

- By DISHANI SENARATNE

Q: What inspired the idea for your novel ‘Aversion’?

A: The novel started in 2016/17 as a series of outbursts, which gradually became tempered into observations of what contemporary Sri Lanka confronts. Part of it as I had grown up in a different country; but I arrived – as it turned out – just at the start of a particularly challenging and turbulent time in the island’s history. So the short pieces I jotted down were ways of venting and processing all the changes and processes I was experiencing, to all the new complexities around me. But although they were standalone pieces, I began to see common patterns and threads tying them together.

I researched Dante’s three books, ‘The Inferno’, ‘Purgatorio’ and ‘Paradiso’; explored Buddhist and Sufi myths, beliefs and practices, and found Carl Muller’s novel ‘Colombo’ very inspiring. I was trying to work out how a person could navigate this world without becoming caught in the tumult of it. The artist who designed the cover captured this idea perfectly.

‘Aversion’ means several things. It means primarily the oppositional stance that many people feel compelled to take, especially these days, where interpersonal conflict is everywhere. We have hostility towards the society we live in, and the people we deal with; and we feel constantly triggered. Taking an instant dislike to someone, hating something on sight; snap judgments, quick dismissal of another’s dignity, rights and inherent humanity, are all examples of this. ‘Aversion’ is actual-ly one of the 5 Poisons that afflict humanity, according to Buddhist doctrine. It can also be read as ‘a version’, meaning recognising that each human being has their own perspective, or version of reality, to which they are very committed. That recognition is the beginning of empathy, and compassion; the bridging virtues, which are the remedies for aversion, which sets us at odds with each other.