A conversation with Bishop Chickera on Thursday

A conversation with Bishop Duleep de Chickeraon his latest book Beyond Checkpoints: Stories of Human Resilience in Troubled Sri Lanka, will take place on Thursday (12) from 5 p.m. to 6.30 p.m. at the Diocesan Chambers, Cathedral of Christ the Living Saviour, Bauddhaloka Mawatha Colombo 7.

The discussion will be moderated by Jaffna University’s Senior Lecturer Dr. Mahendran Thiruvarangan, while selected passages from the book will be read and commented on by educator and story-teller Suramya Hettiarachchi. Published in 2023, and now in its second print, Beyond Checkpoints recently won a State Literary Award. Copies of the book will be on sale at the event.

Beyond Checkpoints is a series of vignettes documenting the author’s experiences and reflections as a priest and Bishop during war-time Sri Lanka. Threaded together in the form of a meditative travelogue, it is an account of his and his wife Geetha’s travels during pastoral visits in the North and East of Sri Lanka. What emerges in the narrative is a voice humbled by the resilience of a people who have lived through the violence of war and harmful effects of political impunity.

In a review, Professor Neloufer de Mel observes: “It is a traveller’s tale, which conveys to us with humour, astute observation and discernment, how victim-survivors, fellow travellers, priests, soldiers and militants in Sri Lanka’s long drawn ethnic war narrated the conditions of their lives, or simply went about their business”. In another review, Hashani Boange writes: “The book is structured around Rev. de Chickera’s travels across various checkpoints – literal and metaphorical – that mark the divisions and tensions within Sri Lankan society. These checkpoints symbolise the barriers and obstacles that exist both in the physical landscape and in the collective psyche of the nation.”

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