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We live our lives burdened with responsibilities, and expectations of how we should act. Those expectations are placed on us by society, by family, and even by ourselves.
However, fiction allows us a space in which to examine what would happen if we stepped outside those expectations. What if, for example, we weren’t dutiful children to our parents? What if that lack of duty was not down to a rebellious, disrespectful streak but a lack of familial respect and love? What if we had been brought up to obey rules that had existed for centuries and governed how we used our natural talents, but felt, deep in our souls, that there was a better way forward?
Readers go into books with certain expectations of character and story. Anyone who reads a lot of fantasy will likely come to a book about a titular prince and anticipate such narrative features as battles, duty and destiny. But this episode’s guest, Maithree Wijesekara, has decided to challenge not only society’s expectations, but the reader’s too. Her prince in The Prince Without Sorrow is a character who tries to be a pacifist in the face of an incredibly violent family.
We talk pacifism vs violence, duty vs freedom of choice, family conflict, cultural oppression. And – oh yes – Star Trek.
Maithree Wijesekara is an Australian-Sri Lankan writer based in Melbourne. Graduating with a Masters in Dentistry in 2021, she splits her time between telling people to please brush their teeth, and writing stories inspired by the fantastical and the real world. The Prince Without Sorrow is her debut novel, out now in the UK and US.
