GILLIAN SLOVO at Edinburgh Festival

Gillian Slovo comes from a highly politicised Family.Her father was a very prominent member of the ANC , participating as a leading member of the military wing.Gillians mother was executed by the South African secret police when she opened a letter bomb which exploded in her face.The influence of her parents have rubbed of on her strong commitments to social justice and state oppression political stands.She co-wrote along with Victoria Brittain a chillingly brilliant play about the mistreatment of captives at Guantanamo Bay , a hugely impacting successful play which was a smash hit in the UK and also enjoyed a successful run on Broadway.Gillian is also a signatory on the Jews for Justice for Palestinians based in the UK , also amongst the signatories are the late Harold Pinter and Will Self , along with over 1500 others.

She has also written Books about the South African Truth Commission ( The Red Dust)and a superb story of a womans survival during the siege of Lenningrad ( The Ice Road).

She gave a very sharp and alluring performance , relating her specific techniques to get a feel for the environment she is writing to capture , describing Sri Lanka ( the part location of her new novel) to a paradise.It looked for a while the meeting would get an entirely non-political account of the Island until the gifted Scottish Poet Jim Aitken asked a question concerning her on the ground understandings of the situation involving the Tamils.Suddenly Gillian burst forth like an orchid , which forms the title of her current Book , and gave an intricate ; fully detailed precise account of the situation that showed of her political senses to a rapturous degree.

Her main point was the Sinhalese-Tamil conflict started during the time the British were training a Sinhalese only elite to gain the reigns of power when they ultimately left.The Sinhalese , for their part , made the cardinal folly to elevate the Sinhalese language as the official language to be used by the state bureaucracy and the school system.This virtually relegated the Tamil Language and culture to an inferior sub-status , hence creating the roots that led to a bitter conflict making the paradise landscape Gillian describes in her Book into a living Hell for the People in the North.

Here is a interview she gave recently on Al-Jazeera:



Near the end she made an observation that many immigrant children could heartily agree with , when she went to South Africa in the 90s the phenomenon of feeling a stranger in the land of her birth and a stranger in her adopted home , a feeling many can entirely understand and empathise with.