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Today we ask whether George Bernard Shaw really was right that youth is wasted on the young, as we chat to two writers who found success later in life.

But first we catch a train to Sri Lanka with an author who you

might say has a wise head on young shoulders. A passage north is the second book by 33-year-old

Anuk Arab Pragasam. Like his debut, a brief marriage, this novel also examines the impact of

the wrenching civil war between Tamil and

Sinhalese inhabitants which tore the country apart for two and a half decades before the official

ceasefire in 2009. A passage north begins with a telephone call informing the protagonist,

Krishan, that his grandmother's former carer, Rani, has died.

As he makes the long journey to attend her funeral across a country still riven with instability,

he contemplates how best to find meaning in a difficult world.

Well, I'm delighted that Anuk joins me now down the line from Berlin. Hello.

Hi, Elizabeth. It's lovely to be here. Thank you for being with us. Now, a large proportion of Sri Lanka's

Tamil population lives outside the country following the Civil War, but Krishna has gone back in

the opposite direction and he's moved there from India. What does he find

...