Roma Tearne is a visual artist and author of two novels, her most recent being Mosquito. She was born in Sri Lanka and has lived in Britain since the age of 10. She completed her MA at the Ruskin School of Drawing and Fine Art. From 2002 to 2003, she was artist in residence at the Ashmolean Museum in Oxford. She has also been artist in residence at Modern Art, Oxford. She lives in Oxford, UK.
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Roma Tearne's novel about love during time of war and set in modern-day Sri Lanka has been shortlisted for the 2008 LA Times Art Seidenbaum Award for First Fiction. Winners will be announced at this year's...
Latest reviews
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For Grace de Silva, a beautiful Ceylonese planter’s daughter, Sept. 1, 1939, wasn’t just the day the war in Europe became official. It was also the day she learned her drunken husband had lost their ancestral tea estates in a poker game. Though forced to leave their...— Aug 26 2009![]()
Sri Lankan-born artist-writer Roma Tearne, who fled the civil unrest in her native country when she was ten, revisits the years leading up to the Sri Lankan Civil War (1983 – 2009) and its effects on families in her second novel, Bone China. In this novel, she is more...— Aug 25 2009![]()
It is September 1939, the war is official, the island of Ceylon is under British crown rule, and Aloysius has just staked his life on a hand of cards and lost. He must bear the bad news to his wife, Grace de Silva, as they sit in the drawing-room surrounded by exquisite rare-bone...— Jun 24 2009![]()
from NewPages.com The mosquito season never seems to end in Sri Lanka; the swarms, “deadly as flying needles,” are always lurking in the shadows, waiting to strike. Frequently referenced as a harbinger of death and strife, the image of the mosquito figures prominently...— May 5 2009![]()
Melissa Block: "Now we turn to a pair of new novels set in Asia. The Gift of Rain is the first novel by Tan Twan Eng set in his home country of Malaysia, and Mosquito by Roma Tearne takes place in Sri Lanka during the current civil war. Reviewer Alan Cheuse serves as our...— Aug 26 2008![]()
In Tearne's beautifully crafted debut, middle-aged novelist Theo Samarajeeva leaves London after the death of his wife and returns to his native Colombo, Sri Lanka, which has been ravaged by the continuing civil war between Tamil separatists and the Sinhalese majority government.— May 14 2008![]()
A grief-stricken novelist returns to Sri Lanka in this first novel from a Sri Lankan born, British-reared artist. For years Sri Lankan native Theo Samarajeeva has been celebrated in England and beyond. His novel Tiger Lily brought the struggle of the separatist Tamil Tigers...— May 12 2008
