The Meccan Shawl: S.L.M. Hanifa’s Stories Reach the World as Jaffna Monitor Enters Publishing

After more than six decades of writing about life in Sri Lanka’s Eastern Province, S.L.M. Hanifa’s stories are reaching an English-speaking audience around the world.

The Meccan Shawl, a collection of fifteen of his short stories translated from Tamil into English, will be launched on Sunday, June 14, at 4:00 p.m. at the Olympic Auditorium Hall on Independence Avenue in Colombo 7. The book is jointly published by Jaffna Monitor and Ghazal Publications.

For Jaffna Monitor, it marks a new venture. For Hanifa, it is the arrival of a lifetime’s work before a new readership.

For sixty-six years, Hanifa has written about the textures of life in Sri Lanka’s East — its faiths, its frictions, its humour, its sorrows, and the humanity that endures through them all.

Beyond the written words, he has long been a respected figure in the Eastern Province, particularly during periods when relations between Tamils and Muslims grew strained and uncertain. For more than four decades, he consistently argued for understanding, dialogue, and coexistence, seeking to preserve ties between communities that were at times being pulled apart by conflict, suspicion, and political upheaval.

Hanifa is eighty-one now. To see his stories reach readers beyond the Tamil-speaking world, translated by people who deeply admire his work, has brought him immense happiness. It has brought us the same.

A Translation Built to Last

The collection was translated by Prof. N. Asokan (eḻuttukkiṉiyavaṉ). It also includes one story in a translation previously rendered by Prof. S. Sivasegaram, reproduced with his kind permission. Pasmila Raviraj served as co-translator and editor.

The work involved far more than translating words from one language to another. Much of the effort went into carrying across the regional dialect and expressions that give Hanifa’s prose its distinctive voice. Many of these words and idioms are so deeply rooted in the culture of Sri Lanka’s Eastern Province that even Tamil speakers from other parts of the island may not immediately recognise them.

The challenge was to preserve that linguistic richness while producing an English text that remained faithful to the original and accessible to readers unfamiliar with the world from which the stories emerged.

The book is already available worldwide through Amazon. Early readers abroad have responded warmly, with many commenting on the quality of the translation. For those who worked on the project over many years, that response has been deeply encouraging.

The Beginning of a Publishing Journey

While The Meccan Shawl is our first book, we hope it will not be our last.

Our second title, Lines and Patterns by Kuppilan I. Shanmugan, translated into English by eḻuttukkiṉiyavaṉ, is now available on Amazon. We will be announcing the date of its formal launch shortly.

Our aim is to bring important writing from Sri Lanka’s Tamil-speaking communities to a wider readership while preserving the voices, histories, and experiences from which that writing emerges.