Depiction of Servant’s World in Reef

Abstract

Romesh Gunesekera was a native of Sri Lanka born in 1954.  The selected novel for this research paper Reef is Gunesekera’s first novel. It depicts the childhood and adolescence of Triton, a restaurateur from Sri Lanka. The Reef interweaves the history of Sri Lanka and the gradual upsurge of racial tension into an intimate and lyrical narrative about a servant boy's coming of age. At the end of the novel, Triton has opened a booming restaurant. Obviously, his growth and maturity away from the immature dependent servant to the independent man has been completed. There are no abrupt twists in plot, this story undulates in like gentle ocean waves, and ripples to a stop with the main characters washed ashore in an alien land, which provides the frame for the story