Q&A with Randy Boyagoda

From my Q&A with Randy Boyagoda, author of Lords of Serendipity: A Novel – A Moving Campus Satire of Strivers, Gatekeepers, and University Dreams:

How much work does your title do to take readers into the story?

I hope the title Lords of Serendipity takes readers into this story by asking themselves two questions. First, who are the Lords? Second, what’s Serendipity? As readers will discover, in a novel about a Sri Lankan village girl who dreams of going to Harvard and then does whatever it takes to get in, people who teach and study at the world’s great universities are like lords, while getting in, as a student, is a source of unexpected joy and beauty, or serendipity. By the way, the word serendipity comes from the earliest European name for Sri Lanka — Serendib — based on their sense of a happy and unexpected discovery of...[read on]

Visit Randy Boyagoda's website.

The Page 69 Test: Governor of the Northern Province.

Q&A with Randy Boyagoda.

--Marshal Zeringue