Dilan Gunawardana

Hong Kong’s hottest property, JK Jr, has it all: boyish charm, acting chops, and a set of ‘crazy ripped’ abs. He’s set to star in Brood Empire, a spy thriller backed by the financial might of Hollywood and China, and destined to smash box-office records in all markets. However, the new era of mainstream western films featuring hunky Asian male leads must wait, as the whole enterprise suddenly falls apart. Enter a not-so-humble web tabloid to piece together this sordid tale of hubris and unfulfilled dreams from the debris.

In his extraordinary journey through Iceland’s history, Saga Land (2017, with Richard Fidler), Kári Gíslason described Icelanders as ‘being reserved’ and ‘a bit severe’ at first glance, likening them to the Hallgrímskirkja church that looms over Reykjavik with its enormous basalt column wings and stony façade. The first three days I spent alone in that city gave me a wholly different impression of its people. On my first day there in 2013, I was greeted by what appeared to be most of the city’s population lined up on the Lækjargata strip waving flags, smiling from ear to ear, and dancing as the annual Gay Pride parade rolled by in all its garish joy. 

One year after Sri Lanka’s civil war ended in 2009, my family travelled to the city of Jaffna after the main highway leading to the country’s north reopened to tourists. Driving up the narrow, two-lane road as it became progressively bumpier, the busy towns, Buddhist temples, and green rice paddy fields of the central region gave way to scrubland sparsely broken up by army checkpoints, villages with ruined buildings dotted with bullet holes, and small roadside stores in front of which sat people whose eyes followed our van with a mixture of curiosity and suspicion. We were met by the same enquiring eyes when we reached Jaffna, a port city whose temples and institutional buildings are marked by Hindu and colonial Portuguese architectural styles, respectively. Jaffna’s population differs culturally and linguistically from its neighbours in the southern provinces of the island, where my family originates. Essentially, we had landed in a foreign country.