Shyam Selvadurai was born in 1965 in Colombo, Sri Lanka. He left Sri Lanka after the 1983 riots in Colombo and settled with his family in Canada. He lives in Toronto.
The unadorned and simple prose has elegance and great sophistication. Moreover, Selvadurai has a genius for touching a nerve with a feather-light touch... A powerful and beautifully written novel * Literary Review * Exquisitely written...superb * Independent * At first sight an innocently observed portrait of Tamil family life in seventies Sri Lanka, it metamorphosed into a lucid, serious piece of writing... Selvadurai's world is delightful, frightening, important and he describes it with touching clarity... His novel is a graceful and intelligent account of the random nature of growing up * Observer * A quiet masterpiece * Gay Times * Glittering and wise... Funny Boy keeps repeating that the human condition can, in spite of everything, be joyful. You are not alone, it says to the reader. I understand you. I too was there. I remember -- Alberto Manguel Selvadurai writes as sensitively about the emotional intensity of adolescence as he does about the wonder of childhood * New York Times Book Review * An extaordinarily powerful, deeply moving novel -- Amitav Ghosh