Randy Boyagoda

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Beggar's Feast

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Ambitious . . . a narrative that spans the whole of the last century

The story of a Ceylonese Odysseus . . . gleaming, ambitious

Beggar's Feast tackles the grand questions of the 20th century - reinvention, power, sacrifice - but what lies at the heart of this sweeping novel is a more intimate concern: how to find peace in an unforgiving world. In Sam Kandy, Randy Boyagoda has created a truly memorable character

Sam Kandy, born in 1899 in a poor village in the heart of Ceylon, resolves to make his own luck amongst the cheats and chancers of the world. When twenty years reckoning with the streets of Colombo, the docks of Sydney and the brothels of Singapore lead Sam back to Ceylon, he coldly pursues a life of wealth, prestige, and power. 
 
Families are torn apart, fortunes are made and lost, and old ways collide with modernity's new machines and money and desires. Ambition, reinvention, tradition and family each demand an answer: what does it cost a man to rewrite his history?

*NEW YORK TIMES, BOOK REVIEW EDITOR'S CHOICE* 
 
*NOMINATED FOR THE DUBLIN LITERARY PRIZE* 
 
Randy Boyagoda's Beggar's Feast is a tour de force of a novel set in Sri Lanka about a man living in defiance of fate. 
 
 
 'Gleaming . . . An ambitious book that seeks to convey the sweep of history through the prism of one island' Sara Wheeler, New York Times 
 
 
Sam Kandy, born in a poor village and abandoned by his family ten years later at a remote temple, resolves to make his own luck amongst the cheats and chancers of the world. 
 
He returns to his birth village as a steely self-made man. He marries a nobleman's daughter and coldly pursues a life of wealth, prestige, and power. 
 
And so begins a devastating chain of events... 
 
 
Beggar's Feast is a masterpiece - a raw, profound and magnificent novel about origins and endings, about what we forsake to survive. 
 
'Ambitious . . . a narrative that spans the whole of the last century', Financial Times 
 
 'A brilliant book. This novel reminds us of the values we are taught as children but which we might forget as we enter adulthood' Nadeem Aslam, author of The Blind Man's Garden 
 
Randy Boyagoda's first novel, Governor of the Northern Province, was nominated for the ScotiaBank Giller Prize in 2006. He has written for a variety of publications, including The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, The Paris Review, and Harper's Magazine. He lives in Toronto with his wife and four daughters.

Randy Boyagoda has written for a variety of publications, including The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, The Paris Review and Harper's Magazine. His second novel, Beggar's Feast, was nominated for the 2013 IMPAC Dublin Literary Prize and was selected as a New York Times Book Review Editor's Choice. Born to Sri Lankan parents, he lives in Toronto with his wife and four daughters.

Beggar's Feast

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