Reclaiming Power and Self Inside The Department of Chosen Ones

A State Literary Award winner at sixteen, Dr. Thisuri Wanniarachchi first stepped into Sri Lanka’s literary world with unusual clarity and courage. Years later, after serving as the youngest member of former President Maithripala Sirisena’s executive staff, leading reform work at the Ministry of Economic Reforms, and completing a PhD on political patronage, she returns with a powerful memoir. The Department of Chosen Ones is both political and deeply personal. It explores how power truly operates in Sri Lanka - not through slogans, but through patronage, loyalty and silence - and what it costs to dissent from within.

Words : Sachini Perera

The Department of Chosen Ones marks your return to Sri Lanka’s literary scene, this time with nonfiction. What made this the moment to tell this story, and why did it need to be told as a memoir rather than analysis?

Writing shaped my life early. My first book won the State Literary Award when I was sixteen, and I published my second while still a university sophomore. For years, being a writer was central to how I understood myself. After I graduated and entered government while beginning my PhD, my work became increasingly analytical - reports, policy notes and academic research. Over time, the creative part of me felt distant. If you had asked me a few years ago whether I still thought of myself as a writer, I would probably have said no. This book became a way of reclaiming that identity. Having completed my PhD, I was sitting with years of research findings that urgently needed to be shared. I did not want to write another analytical piece that would sit on a shelf. Much of the research was inseparable from my lived experience navigating power, patronage and exclusion. Memoir felt like the most honest form. The timing aligned practically as well. A new role working across time zones unexpectedly gave me long, quiet hours to write. In many ways, the book came together at the intersection of readiness, urgency and opportunity.

Excited to read more? Get Lanka Woman in Magzter for our latest Digital Issue!
www.magzter.com/.../Lanka.../Women's-Interest/530905
www.lw.lk