The Teardrop Island
Trouble in Nuala
Anil’s Ghost 
Chinaman
Novel of emotional instability set mainly in OXFORD
Ten Great Books set in SRI LANKA
10th December 2023
Ten Great Books set in Sri Lanka. Sri Lanka, historically known as Ceylon, is an island country in South Asia. It lies in the Indian Ocean, southwest of the Bay of Bengal, separated from the Indian peninsula by the Gulf of Mannar and the Palk Strait. It is a land of amazing archeological sites, dense forests and plains teeming with wildlife, colonial history, and beautiful beaches.
Sri Lanka is an island that everyone loves at some level inside themselves. A very special island that travellers, from Sinbad to Marco Polo, dreamed about. A place where the contours of the land itself forms a kind of sinewy poetry. Romesh Gunesekera
The Seven Moons of Maali Almeida by Shehan Karunatilaka
Colombo, 1990. Maali Almeida, war photographer, gambler and closet gay, has woken up dead in what seems like a celestial visa office. His dismembered body is sinking in the serene Beira lake and he has no idea who killed him. At a time where scores are settled by death squads, suicide bombers and hired goons, the list of suspects is depressingly long, as the ghouls and ghosts with grudges who cluster round can attest.
But even in the afterlife, time is running out for Maali. He has seven moons to try and contact the man and woman he loves most and lead them to a hidden cache of photos that will rock Sri Lanka.
Ten years after his prizewinning novel Chinaman established him as one of Sri Lanka’s foremost authors, Karunatilaka is back with a rip-roaring epic, full of mordant wit and disturbing truths.
The Teardrop Island by Cherry Briggs
Mr Fernando led me into a dark room that was lined with book-cases and smelled of leather and damp. The polished, concrete floor of the library was covered with white jasmine flowers that had blown through the windows during the storm. He began to select from the shelves a collection of disintegrating books. ‘If you are going to read any of them, it should really be this one,’ he said as he passed me two thick volumes, embossed with gold lettering and spotted with damp. The work was simply called Ceylon and was written by an Irishman named Sir James Emerson Tennent, who had been sent to the island in 1845 by Her Majesty’s Government.
The Teardrop Island follows in the footsteps of the eccentric Victorian James Emerson Tennent, along a route which takes Cherry to pilgrimage trails, into tea estates and rural regions inhabited by indigenous tribes, as well as through restricted areas of the former warzone, delving under the surface of the contemporary culture via cricket matches and fortune tellers.
Trouble in Nuala by Harriet Steel
When Inspector Shanti de Silva moves with his English wife, Jane, to a new post in the sleepy hill town of Nuala, he anticipates a more restful life than police work in the big city entails. However an arrogant plantation owner with a lonely wife, a crusading lawyer, and a death in suspicious circumstances present him with a riddle that he will need all his experience to solve.
Set on the exotic island of Ceylon in the 1930s, Trouble in Nuala is an entertaining and relaxing mystery spiced with humour and a colourful cast of characters.
Anil’s Ghost by Michael Ondaatje
Anil’s Ghost transports us to Sri Lanka, a country steeped in centuries of tradition, now forced into the late twentieth century by the ravages of a bloody civil war. Enter Anil Tissera, a young woman and forensic anthropologist born in Sri Lanka but educted in the West, sent by an international human rights group to identify the victims of the murder campaigns sweeping the island.
When Anil discovers that the bones found in an ancient burial site are in fact those of a much more recent victim, her search for the terrible truth hidden in her homeland begins. What follows is a story about love, about family, about identity – a story driven by a riventing mystery.
Chinaman by Shehan Karunatilaka
Ambitious, playful and strikingly original, Chinaman is a novel about cricket and Sri Lanka – and the story of modern day Sri Lanka through its most cherished sport. Hailed by the Gratiaen Prize judges as ‘one of the most imaginative works of contemporary Sri Lankan fiction’, it is an astounding book.
Padma and the Elephant Sutra by W L Snowden
A blue moon has appeared, threatening an ancient way of life, forcing the custodians of paradise to confront nature’s greatest nemesis, humanity. A fantastical tale, rich in history and myth. Meet Padma, an unlikely champion of hope, and George, a man tormented by the cruel deeds of his past. Carried from ancient days to distant constellations, a captivating and extraordinary journey unfolds in pursuit of a destiny they must claim. Beginning in Ceylon in the 1830’s, ‘Padma and the Elephant Sutra’ follows their epic struggle to fulfil an ancient covenant, agreed in a time beyond recollection, to save a fragile world. The price of success will be great, but the cost of failure, unimaginable.
River of Ink by Paul M M Cooper
All Asanka knows is poetry. From his humble village beginnings in the great island kingdom of Lanka, he has risen to the prestigious position of court poet and now delights in his life of ease: composing romantic verses for love-struck courtiers, enjoying the confidence of his king and covertly teaching Sarasi, a beautiful and beguiling palace maid, the secrets of his art.
But when Kalinga Magha, a ruthless prince with a formidable army, arrives upon Lanka’s shores, Asanka’s world is changed beyond imagining. Violent, hubristic and unpredictable, Magha usurps the throne, laying waste to all who stand in his way. Under his terrifying rule, nothing in the city is left untouched and, like many of his fellow citizens, Asanka retreats into the shadows, hoping to pass unnoticed by the tyrant. But it seems his new master is a lover of poetry…
To Asanka’s horror, Magha tasks him with the translation of an epic Sanskrit poem, a tale of Gods and nobles, love and revenge, which the king believes will have a civilising effect on his subjects, soothing their discontent and snuffing out the fires of rebellion he suspects are igniting across the island.
Asanka has always believed that poetry makes nothing happen, but as each new chapter he writes is disseminated through the land and lines on the page become cries in the street, his belief and his loyalties are challenged. And, as Magha circles ever closer to the things Asanka treasures most, the poet will discover that true power lies not at the point of a sword, but in the tip of a pen.
A Passage North by Anuk Arudpragasam
It begins with a message: a telephone call informing Krishan that his grandmother’s former care-giver, Rani, has died in unexpected circumstances, at the bottom of a well in her village in the north, her neck broken by the fall. The news arrives on the heels of an email from Anjum, an activist he fell in love with four years earlier while living in Delhi, bringing with it the stirring of distant memories and desires. As Krishan makes the long journey by train from Colombo into the war-torn Northern Province for the funeral, so begins a passage into the soul of an island devastated by violence.
Written with precision and grace, A Passage North is a poignant memorial for the missing and the dead, and a luminous meditation on time, consciousness, and the lasting imprint of the connections we make with others.
‘A Passage North is written with scrupulous attention to nuance and detail. Its world is the deeply-layered, rich interior of its protagonist’s mind but also contemporary Sri Lanka itself, war-scarred, traumatized. At its center is an exquisite form of noticing, a way of rendering consciousness and handling time that connects Arudpragasam to the great novelists of the past’
Mosquito by Roma Tearne
When author Theo Samarajeeva returns to his native Sri Lanka after his wife’s death, he hopes to escape his gnawing loss amid the lush landscape of his increasingly war-torn country. But as he sinks into life in this beautiful, tortured land, he also finds himself slipping into friendship with an artistic young girl, Nulani, whose family is caught up in the growing turmoil. Soon friendship blossoms into love. Under the threat of civil war, their affair offers a glimmer of hope to a country on the brink of destruction…
But all too soon, the violence which has cast an ominous shadow over their love story explodes, tearing them apart. Betrayed, imprisoned and tortured, Theo is gradually stripped of everything he once held dear – his writing, his humanity and, eventually, his love. Broken by the belief her lover is dead, Nulani flees Sri Lanka to a cold and lonely life of exile. As the years pass and the country descends into a morass of violence and hatred, the tragedy of Theo and Nulani’s failed love spreads like a poison among friends sickened by the face of civil war, and the lovers must struggle to recover some of what they have lost and to resurrect, from the wreckage of their lives, a fragile belief in the possibility of redemption.
A Maiden’s Prayer by Srianthi Perera
Set in the Southeast Asian tropics of Sri Lanka, the story centres on an extended family trying to marry off a reluctant male relative. Berty Rajakaruna, a Jane Austenian-type of bachelor, is trying to figure out whether marriage is worth trying to reclaim his family estate from the clutches of a scheming sister. The estate is crumbling but special because it was founded by his great-great-grandfather, a Mudaliyar (comparable to a country squire) under British rule.
Wittily narrated by a young, precocious niece, the story opens a window to armchair travel; each chapter is a vignette with social, political or cultural context woven together by Berty’s life. Among the themes are astrology, Buddhism, coming-of-age and the political backdrop of Sirimavo Bandaranaike’s socialist-leaning government.
Above all, it poses the question: this tiny island in the Indian Ocean is a world apart, but how connected are we in our needs, desires, fears and emotions?
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THE SERPENT’S LAIR by Riall Nolan!
Max lands a dangerous mission on an Indian Ocean island quickly descending into chaos…
Since a bomb blew him through a hotel window in Colombo, international fixer Max Donovan’s life has become more complicated.
He is in possession of a manuscript which is proof of a revolutionary insurgency encircling Sri Lanka. He is not, however, in possession of its author, Osbert – just his beguiling niece, who wants Donovan’s help.
Their adversary is a powerful drugs lord who has his fangs out. Osbert can’t fall prey to him. Neither can the manuscript. Unless he is stopped, the whole country is in danger.
Facing obstacles like shark-infested waters, dense jungle, and hijacked trains, is just the start of it. Donovan will have to enter the serpent’s lair to subdue the threat, once and for all.
THE SERPENT’S LAIR is the third novel in the Max Donovan Adventures series. Get the first and second books, ONE BEATS THE BUSH and WITH TOOTH AND NAIL, now!