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Gunathilake Bandara Senanayake (14 July 1913 – 16 March 1985) (known as G.B Senanayake) was a prominent Sinhala writer who portrayed Sinhala middle-class life in his novels. He is credited with introducing free verse poetry to Sinhala. He became blind later in his life and still managed to write 16 books with help from his sister. The second stage of Sinhala short stories begins with G.B. Senanayake's short stories. Though mainly focused on short stories Senanayake also wrote Novels and Poetry as well. He introduced 'Nisandas' during a time when Sinhala poetry was in need of a different style. G.B. Senanayake was a writer who was very concerned about being grammatically correct in writing.

Written Books



  • G.B. Senanayake is considered as the writer who paid special attention to the artistic side of short stories and developed Sinhala short stories from a skilled aspect.
  • Senanayake improved Sinhala short stories as a pleasing and flexible medium. Especially language and structure were more polished in G.B. Senanayake's works. On the other hand the characters and incidents are allowed to develop with an interrelationship with reason and result in his stories. Likewise G.B. allows incidents and facts causing the incidents and the mental status caused by the incident and its development to come out automatically.
  • It can be seen that Senanayake's stories improved the composition and regulations of Sinhala short stories. G.B. Senanayake has been a person who has shown ability in drawing the language flexibly into fiction writing. He thought that written language was artificial. He didn't fancy high flown language used by intellectuals.
  • Critics show that it was G.B. who highlighted the importance of poetic styles in short stories.
  • It is said that Senanayake became more prone to artistic side of the work because he was influenced by foreign literature. Being influenced by French and Russian literature would have forced Senanayake to exceed the limits of Sinhala short stories.
  • G.B. was most influenced by French short story styles, especially [Guy de Maupassant]. Maupassant tried to bring out the tragedy of the high class. Likewise Senanayake tried to speak about the middle class of the middle-class people living in towns. He brought it out in a more personalised manner rather than bringing it in a subject wise manner. Because of this while bringing out feelings he also brought out signs and descriptions of the environment.
  • Looking at how Russian literature affected G.B. Senanayake's works it seems that Anton Chekhov's works have influenced him. Especially exploring the artistic beauty of his own short stories was a path he found from Russian literature.