‘When does a satisfying and enjoyable book become a “classic”?’ In her response to this complex question, Elizabeth Foley, Editorial Director of ‘Vintage Classics’, quoted as her own favourite the answer given by Italo Calvino, author of If on a Winter's Night a Traveller. ‘A classic is a book that has never finished saying what it has to say’.

What does a ‘classic’ work of fiction ‘have to say’? Most dedicated readers of serious literature would affirm that it should say something of value. They would expect from a ‘classic’ some kind of significant statement about life and the world. a statement that would draw attention to human problems, and condemn (or applaud) certain points of view as expressed by its characters. Additionally, for we are discussing imaginative literary fiction (and not, let us say, such texts, however influential they might have been in their time, as Hitler's Mein Kampf), the language of a ‘classic’ novel should not only be fresh, memorable, and suited to the purposes of the author, but capable in itself of yielding lasting pleasure to the reader. This, I would like to add, is a feature common to the diverse styles and approaches that Professor Wijesinha has dwelt upon.