The sudden death of Sri Lankan journalist, Professor Qadri Ismail in the United States,came as a great shock to the media world.
According to his friends in Minnesota,Ismail had told them that he would come for an evening cup of tea on Monday and never turned up. Later, when they tried to call him, there was no answer and subsequently they found him dead in his apartment.
Back home, Ismail, who was a well-known journalist had served at most of the media houses in the island. People’s attention were drawn towards Ismail for his independent reporting and also for his style of writing with his English Honours degree at the Peradeniya University. He also covered the ethnic war in Sri Lanka before he moved to the USA.
He was the son of late Proctor Shakir Ismail and Fazeera Ismail, he had also authored the new Galle Fort Cookery book.
Ismail was associate professor of English at the University of Minnesota, USA, and has also been a journalist in Sri Lanka. His areas of specialty include cultural studies, postcolonial literature, literary theory, gender/sexuality, historiography, democracy, human rights, the enlightenment, the British 19th century and cricket.
He was an old boy of S. Thomas College, Mt.Lavinia.