Rodney Vidanapathirana may be best known as a journalist and former editor of the Sinhala tabloid weekly Tharunaya, during which tenure he introduced many remote scenic places to the general public and wrote several very interesting travel books.  What may not be so well known is that he is the lyricist of several popular Sinhala songs and that he dreamed of becoming a singer in his youth. Charumathi is his debut novel.

But his versatile talent doesn’t stop there. He has made several feature films (including a pioneering martial arts film which has been lost) and a director of television travel programmes and tele-dramas. As he writes in the preface to Charmuathi, he now enjoys filmmaking more than writing. But this short, intense novel is written with a vigour which undoubtedly stems from the pent up emotion of his life. His recent life has been marked by the tragic loss of his wife due to illness, and the novel is partly autobiographical.

His youthful literary hero was popular novelist Karunasena Jayalath, whom he still holds in high regard.

The book is an author publication (Rodney Vidanapathirana (0777304005).