Simon Navagattegama

Simon Navagattegama [also spelled Nawagattegama] (September 15, 1940 – October 9, 2005) was a Sinhala novelist, Sinhala Radio Play writer, playwright and actor.

He is well known for his novel Sansararanye Dhadayakkaraya (Hunter in the wilderness of the Sansara) for its magical realism which is influenced by Buddhist mythologies, Mahayana Buddhist concepts and Freudian and Jungian psychoanalysis.

K. K. Saman Kumara, a literary critic and writer in Sri Lanka, calls Simon as the predecessor of magical realism in Sri Lanka and calls his literary style as a Buddhist Borgesian one.

Saman Kumara terms the Simon’s Literature as the ‘Buddhist Wisdom Literature’, taking it as a separate genre, which is unique to Sri Lanka.

He compares Simon’s Literary endeavor to the philosophical attempts of Erick Fromm, who tried to merge Buddhism, Marxism, and Freudian psychoanalysis.

Malinda Seneviratne, who translated the Simon’s novel Sansararanyaye Dadayakkaraya (Hunter in the wilderness of the Sansara) into English, says that it "was an important literary landmark and Simon is one of the best writers in Sinhala in the second half of the last century."

Deepthi Kumara Gunarathna, has identified ‘Hunter in the wilderness of the Sansara’ as a novel which shows a postmodernism unique to Sri Lanka.

K. K. Saman Kumara recognizes Simon Navagaththegama as one of authors, which he calls as the ‘Modernist Trinity’ in Sinhala Literature, Tennyson Perera and Ajith Thilakasena among others.