Rajith Savanadasa
On his newest novel Ruins.

Today, I meet writer Rajith Savanadasa at the Malthouse Theatre. It’s afternoon tea time, and the Malthouse café is busy with actors letting off steam and directors reading over their notes. A small school group climbs up and down the staircase, sparrows flit in and out through the open windows, the place is a hive of activity.  Suddenly, alighting from the staircase is Rajith, content and calm. He buys a cup of coffee and we sit in the middle of the crowd to chat. 

I’ve brought along a copy of his debut novel Ruins that I’ve just picked up from my local library after being on the reservation list for two weeks. One chapter in and I’m instantly immersed in a world different from mine, but with elements I still recognise. Starting as a short story around the theme of family, Ruins became a story about how a family living in Colombo in the aftermath of the Sri Lankan civil war start talking to each other again. ‘You can choose your friends, but you can’t choose your family’ says Rajith, ‘if you have a conflicting relationship due to political divides, how can we rebuild these relationships and start really talking to each other beyond talking about the weather?’ Ruins was released by Hachette in 2016, and Rajith enjoyed the editorial process immediately. His editor Elizabeth Cowell recognised Rajith’s use of the Sri Lankan language Sinhalese, leaving the words untranslated because to the characters, the words are their own. Additionally, with the mark of a true editor, Elizabeth helped Rajith update one of the routes the character made in the book with the simple tool of Google Maps. Rajith thoroughly enjoyed the process. ‘With this help, the themes and main story arch was discovered, it was a great process and I felt supported all the way through.’ 

Right now, Rajith is a Writer in Residence at the Malthouse Theatre. Here, he’s working on his next novel Another Name for Gold, for which he’s been awarded a grant by the Australian Council for the Arts. He can’t tell me much about the book, but he does give me a few hints into the story that I feel lucky to receive. 

Gold examines the process of migration surrounding an asylum seeker, suddenly dropped into a different place, feels like an alien in foreign land. Rajith explores how this person starts to dress to fit in with the world around them, how they change their speech and their values, how a sound, a look and a movement can mean different things in two languages. And how the seeker, allowed to stay, looks back at this time five years later. 

As well as writing Gold, Rajith is slowly working on a piece of documentary theatre. This piece stems from the themes of his work in Open City Stories, an oral history project of asylum seekers living in Melbourne Rajith created with editor Richard Easton and the Darebin Ethnic Communities Council Asylum Seeker Welcome Lounge. The piece will centre around formative events for individual asylum seekers that affect their right to live in Australia, exploring the control and responsibility the storyteller has over the pieces of information he receives, often fraught material that could be used against each individual in court. ‘There are many layers to a migrant story’ says Rajith, ‘and through my process, I realised I have to write myself into the piece. The storyteller has immense power, lives depend on the way stories are told.’

Rajith’s time at The Malthouse is instrumental in telling this story. He has access to all areas of the theatre; from sitting in on play readings and rehearsals, to picking the brains of visiting directors and dramaturgs. ‘I get to listen to how they think about telling a story, the tools that they work with on a play to get to the core of it’ says Rajith, ‘a process and a medium which is very different to the process of writing a book’.

Rajith’s office is high above the Malthouse, tucked away in a space where he can immerse himself in his work. He has a writing day to himself every Monday and often writes into the evening at home, and on weekends, after his two year old daughter is asleep. Rajith’s three-dimensional characters lift off their pages, yet their creation takes time. ‘Writing is often not the largest part of the work, a lot of the work is the thinking before, taking time to develop each person.’ He likes to read about the construction of work, especially Zadie Smith’s book of essays ‘Changing My Mind’ in which Zadie writes about the importance of creating the core of the book, building scaffolding to house a novel.  ‘When the writer is finished, the house is shiny and new, yet the core structure remains solid.’

Once the story is fully formed, Rajith turns to his partner and family for their feedback. His cousin, a sociologist, relates Rajith’s work back to academic texts and themes. His partner, a fellow writer, offers up constructive criticism. Friends from the workshop group he ran through Writers Victoria at The Wheelers Centre through the Hot Desk Fellowship he was awarded in 2013, chip in with their chapter notes. 

This year, the Sydney Morning Herald recognised Rajith as one of the best young Australian novelists. ‘It’s nice’ Rajith tells me, ‘a good feeling, it feels very surreal but validating. Writing is a solitude experience, yet it gives you incentive and motivation when someone tells you you’re on the right track. You can push things further, challenge yourself creatively.’

Rajith pauses to finish his cup of coffee, and while I write down the last thing he’s said, I suddenly realise that the café has cleared and it’s just Rajith and I and the sparrows that dance around, picking up crumbs. We say our goodbyes, Rajith returns upstairs to his writing and I step outside to a sunny afternoon. As I walk up to the tram stop, I’m surrounded by loud life; construction sites, cars sweeping up the road, people running in the park with their dog. Yet my conversation with Rajith reminds me of moments of stillness, of listening to the way someone speaks, of seeing a moment between two strangers. I stop walking and turn to look back. Raising my hand to shield my eyes from the sun, I can just see the top of the Malthouse tower. I think of Rajith at his desk writing into the night.

This interview first appeared on Writers Victoria’s Spotlight On Series.