
Sign up to save your podcasts
Or


In 2009 and 2010, two cargo ships packed with refugees fleeing the Sri Lankan civil war arrived on the shores of Canada. Those refugees inspired Sharon Bala's debut novel, "The Boat People," which won the 2019 Harper Lee Prize for Legal Fiction. Told through the eyes of a Sri Lankan man seeking asylum for himself and his son; a young Sri Lankan-Canadian law student reluctantly assigned to help with his case; and the granddaughter of Japanese immigrants to Canada interned during World War II, who will have to decide whether the details of his story add up. In this episode of the Modern Law Library, Bala speaks with the ABA Journal's Lee Rawles about the true stories behind her fictional novel, and what winning the prize named for the author of "To Kill a Mockingbird" means to her.
By Legal Talk Network4.8
3838 ratings
In 2009 and 2010, two cargo ships packed with refugees fleeing the Sri Lankan civil war arrived on the shores of Canada. Those refugees inspired Sharon Bala's debut novel, "The Boat People," which won the 2019 Harper Lee Prize for Legal Fiction. Told through the eyes of a Sri Lankan man seeking asylum for himself and his son; a young Sri Lankan-Canadian law student reluctantly assigned to help with his case; and the granddaughter of Japanese immigrants to Canada interned during World War II, who will have to decide whether the details of his story add up. In this episode of the Modern Law Library, Bala speaks with the ABA Journal's Lee Rawles about the true stories behind her fictional novel, and what winning the prize named for the author of "To Kill a Mockingbird" means to her.

32,143 Listeners

5,102 Listeners

3,528 Listeners

373 Listeners

23 Listeners

478 Listeners

506 Listeners

9,517 Listeners

14 Listeners

12 Listeners

22 Listeners

115 Listeners

8 Listeners

1,118 Listeners

9 Listeners

55 Listeners

31 Listeners

26 Listeners

33 Listeners

60 Listeners

87,588 Listeners

112,734 Listeners

56,473 Listeners

13 Listeners

10,271 Listeners

47 Listeners

5,774 Listeners

12,712 Listeners

34 Listeners

10,931 Listeners

5 Listeners

51 Listeners

7 Listeners