We are extremely proud to have heard from former TLC client Chhimi Tenduf-La, whose short story collection Loyal Stalkers was published by Pan Macmillan India last year. This is Chhimi’s third book and first short story collection, with two novels, The Amazing Racist and Panther, both published in 2015. Chhimi has very kindly shared a few words about his experience with TLC here:
“Since Loyal Stalkers was to be my first collection of short stories, I wanted to get some expert advice on my MS before I submitted it to my agent. My TLC reader Cynthia Rogerson was fantastic; she highlighted my areas of strength and where I needed to make improvements and also advised me on the structure and length of each story and how best they would fit into a collection. Although I knew I would get superb editorial input from my agent and publisher, I wanted initial help from a skilled writer I did not know personally. Cynthia gave me the confidence, to pass on my MS to my agent, after the changes she suggested, without having to worry that he might reply saying, ‘as much as I liked your first two books, I think we need to go our separate ways…it’s not you, it’s me etc.’ I highly recommend this service.”
About the Book
In a private room sheltered from the Colombo riots, a seventeen-year-old girl gives birth to a hatechild. At a city gym, an introverted fitness instructor obsesses over his unattainable client. Inside an untended guest-house room, an adolescent cricket champ is caught unawares by his coach’s violent fury. By a rain-drenched gravesite, a special-needs teacher confides in a stranger.
Edgy yet tender, racy yet warm, these interlinked stories take us into the unfamiliar everyday of Sri Lankan living, where smugglers, waiters, single moms and cheaters cross paths as they attempt to negotiate a web of shock, subterfuge and irony.
“Inventive and funny, these stories serve as strokes of compassion, passion, obsession, shame, neglect, greed and selfless love on Tenduf-La’s fictional landscape, interspersed with the author’s trademark humour. Sri Lanka bristles with life in these stories, with Tenduf-La picking on its people’s specific traits, their mannerisms, their ways of being and seeing.”
– Scroll
“This is high-risk, high-reward writing… a delightful bouquet of noir thrills”
About the Writer
Half Tibetan, half English, Chhimi Tenduf-La has lived in Sri Lanka, on and off, for thirty years. Educated at Eton and Durham, he runs an international school in Colombo, teaches economics and provides university counselling. He has written plays, and fiction for local publications. His first book, The Amazing Racist, was published in 2015.
