• Nifraz Rifaz on the launch of his debut novel, loss, longing, and resilience

The launch of ‘Paper Plane,’ the debut novel by writer Nifraz Rifaz, brought together a room full of readers, writers, and long-time supporters who have watched his journey from Sinhala short stories to English fiction shaped by migration, identity, and the unsettled years around the Easter Sunday attacks. 

The event moved between readings, reflection, and conversation, anchored by a clear theme: stories matter when they come from a place of truth.

‘Paper Plane’ is built on quiet stories, private memories, and the lives of people who do not always speak publicly about their experiences. It records the pressure points that shaped Sri Lanka after the Easter Sunday attacks without turning trauma into spectacle. It also looks at the everyday tensions of living abroad, where identity shifts depending on who is watching.

A childhood shaped by language

Rifaz began the evening with a story that explained his early relationship with language. “As a Muslim child who spoke fluent Sinhala, I never felt like a second-class citizen. I sounded like the majority. I realised early on that language has power,” he said. 

He was the batch top in Sinhala grammar, tutored his classmates, and wrote poems and short stories in school. His childhood ambition, he admitted with a smile, was not literary at all. 

“I wanted to be a bus conductor. That was my dream. A bus conductor was very popular and in-demand and had a lot of money. Of course, as I grew up, I developed other dreams,” Rifaz said, noting that as he grew, he realised he was creative. 

Art came naturally to him. “Every year I won gold medals for my drawings,” he said. “But one of my uncles discouraged me from pursuing art because of religious concerns. So I put down the pencil and turned to writing.”

Rifaz wrote primarily in Sinhala, from short stories to longer stories to poems, but he knew that writing in Sinhala alone would not help him achieve his dream of becoming a renowned writer, and so he made the switch to writing in English. 

His path to English writing began at the Galle Literary Festival in the early 2000s, where he volunteered. There he encountered writers from around the world, stayed up late listening to discussions, and watched how literary festivals gave authors access to new audiences.

“At the Galle Literary Festival I realised something simple,” he said. “These authors came to Sri Lanka, stayed in boutique hotels, experienced Sri Lankan hospitality, met so many other writers and fans, and spoke about their work, sometimes only for an hour across the whole festival, and people listened, they wanted to know, and they wanted to meet those authors. I told myself, one day, I want to be one of those authors.”

He took a small but symbolic step: he printed a business card that introduced him as ‘Nifraz Rifaz, Writer.’ He kept it with him long before he had a published book to justify the title.

A long literary education

A defining moment in his writing life came when he joined Write to Reconcile, the programme led by Ameena Hussein and curated by Shyam Selvadurai. The project brought together 20 young writers to explore themes linked to war, reconciliation, and social conflict.

It was his first trip to Jaffna. “It felt like entering a different country,” he said. “You read about the war, but in Jaffna you feel the residue of it everywhere.”

When the group was asked to write stories about the war, many centred on Sinhala and Tamil characters. He shifted the lens. “I thought, what about the Muslims? What about the Christians? Those stories were also part of the conflict.” He wrote about a Muslim protagonist and the story was selected for the anthology.

After the reading, a woman approached him and thanked him. “She said: ‘Thank you for telling my story.’ That was the moment I realised writing has impact. Words can move people, and sometimes you carry a story someone else is afraid to tell.”

Half of ‘Paper Plane’ takes place in London. The novel grew partly from a writing sponsorship he received from HSBC a decade ago, which gave him time and structure to work on the manuscript.

He later moved to Hong Kong, where he joined a writers’ circle and hosted storytelling nights. “Those events taught me how to read to a live audience,” he said. “You learn rhythm. You learn where the story drops and where it lifts.”

The experience of being brown in a corporate expat environment also shaped the book. “During the week I was part of the expat bubble,” he said. “ But during the weekend I was brown. Suddenly, I was suspicious – a potential drug dealer. Or the guy who smelled like curry. Or I was asked which refugee camp I came from. It was the same person, but different labels depending on the day.”

These shifts, he explained, found their way into the novel as themes of perception, identity, and belonging.

Easter Sunday: The ‘Paper Plane’ linchpin

Although ‘Paper Plane’ is not about the Easter Sunday attacks, the book moves through the emotional terrain that surrounded them. The turning point was a taxi ride. Rifaz landed in Sri Lanka on the morning of the attacks. The driver who picked him up was Catholic and from Negombo.

“From 9 a.m. to 9.30 a.m., I watched the man change,” he said. “At first, we were talking about food and weather. Then he started getting calls about bombs in churches and his whole tone shifted. That moment stayed with me.”

Rifaz also described how friends and cousins shared stories about raids, suspicion, and fear in the weeks that followed. “In the Muslim community, we are taught not to show our pain. We keep our hurt private. Someone asked me why I wanted to write about this. I said, because someone should,” he said. 

One of his colleagues later assumed the book was autobiographical. He clarified: “I’m not writing my story. I’m the vessel. These are the stories of people who trusted me with their experiences.”

Music also played a huge part in the ‘Paper Plane’ journey. The evening included a discussion moderated by Prof. Neluka Silva, who explored the emotional and structural choices behind the novel.

Her first question was about M.I.A., whose music shaped parts of the book and the launch event. Rifaz discovered her unexpectedly. “I found her in 2017,” he said. “I was walking in Soho in Hong Kong and saw a poster of a brown woman who looked Sri Lankan. I went home and Googled her. I liked her voice, her interviews, everything. After Easter, her lyrics suddenly made sense in a new way.”

Prof. Silva then asked him about emotional truth in fiction. She said: “For me, emotion should not be placed on the page deliberately. The writer does not need to push it. If the story is honest, the emotion comes out on its own.”

Rifaz agreed. “When you try to force emotion, the reader can sense it,” he said. “I tried to stay honest. I wrote what felt true, not what felt dramatic.”

The importance of finding your gift

Before closing the evening, Rifaz shared a short reflection on creativity. “I spent years wondering what my gift was,” he said. “I wasn’t good at sports. I left art behind. I wrote in Sinhala, then in English. Only now do I realise that maybe God was guiding me towards writing all along.”

He added: “Your gift doesn’t need to be perfect. You only need to recognise it. And when you do, you share it.”

For readers who attended the launch, the novel felt timely. Several commented on how rare it was to hear Muslim voices in English fiction during this period. ‘Paper Plane’ fills that space with restraint, empathy, and a strong sense of purpose.

‘Paper Plane’ by Nifraz Rifaz is available for sale through Jam Fruit Tree Publications, Expographic bookshops, and online through Amazon