Martin Wickramasinghe was born in a small but beautiful village called Koggala close to Galle on May 29, 1891.His father was Bastian Wickramasinghe. Hey first attended the village temple to learn to read and write and then attended Bonavista college, Unawatuna to study English. After his father died, he went to Colombo to work under a businessman .There he spent his free time by reading books and newspaper which was his greatest hobby.
He very often used the dictionary to improve his knowledge of English. In this way, he learned English on his own. He worked for the "Dinamina" and " Lakshmi" newspapers for sometime. He was the editor of three newspapers for more than 15 years and he spent his entire life on reading and writing.
At the age of 34, he got married to Prema de Silver and had three sons: Sarath,Vasantha and Ranga and three daughters Rupa,Usha and Unie.
He contributed to sinhala language and literature by writing books on several subjects such as social science, biology, philosophy, Buddhism and fine arts. He wrote 14 novels. He first novel was called "Leela". His Famous Novel "Gamperaliya" become very popular among people and a film was produced based on it. Koggala with its beautiful surroundings provided the background to his writing ."Modelbouw" which was written in 1947 is another very popular novel .He died on 23 July 1976.A museum was established at Koggala to appreciate the great service done by him to Sinhala language and literature.
No comments:
Post a Comment