AustLit

'How is the content of a literary canon, or tradition to be configured? What counts as a literary archive? More than 25 years after Edward Said's Orientalism (1978), it seems reasonable to assume, that central to such traditions, would be the work of those who live and work in the society that gives rise to it. In this review, such a location of Michelle de Kretser's new novel, The Hamilton Case is offered, as a caution to metropolitan literary critics who continue to approach Sri Lankan writing in English, as Christopher Columbus approached 'America'. It is argued that the novel owes much to, and can be read as echoing and elaborating the detective fiction of S. W. R. D. Bandaranaike, who was, also, the fourth Prime Minister of Ceylon (Sri Lanka), 1956-1959' (author's abstract).