His name at birth was Pedrick de Silva, and he was the last child of five in his family. Starting from the beginning, Piyadasa Sirisena was born on Augin the village of Athuruwella, Induruwa in Galle district. Piyadasa Sirisena’s 146 birth anniversary fell on last August 31 and we think it is an ideal time to discuss his literary life. But he is a writer who deserves to be close study. One reason for it that ProfessorĮdiriweera Sarachchandra demerited his fiction. However, until very recently the academia in Sri Lanka took him for granted as a writer.
Piyadasa Sirisena was the first writer who developed vast readership around the Sinhala novel - his first novel Vasanavantha Vivahaya Hewath Jayatissa Saha Roslin (Lucky marriage or Jayatissa and Roslin) sold 25,000 copies within 10 years. If Martin Wickramasinghe is considered to be ‘father of Sinhala fiction’, Piyadasa Sirisena should be considered the ‘grandfather of Sinhala fiction’, because without him Wickramasinghe may not have been able to create the first realistic Sinhala novel, Gamperaliya, so early.
