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“In my childhood, I was known as the boy whose mother had run off with an Englishman”

So begins the story of Myshkin and his mother Gayatri, who is driven to rebel against tradition and follow her artist’s instinct for freedom.

Anuradha Roy’s deeply moving novel tells the story of men and women trapped in a dangerous era uncannily similar to the present. Its scale is matched by its power as a parable of our times.

'This is why you read fiction at all' – Marie Arana, Washington Post

'Roy’s prose does not hit a single wrong note: its restrained beauty sings off the page' – Neel Mukherjee, Time Magazine

The mysteries of the world are all but gone. For thousands of years, Sri Lanka was the abode of the martial art Angampora, a sophisticated ancient discipline that was fortified with military philosophy, a deep spiritual connection with nature, and a deadly array of combat techniques. The dramatic saga of this exotic art begins with legends that date back to the dim recesses of time and unfolds to the present day, where it has survived after enduring the onslaughts of three centuries of colonialism and political unrest in Sri Lanka's recent past.

Angampora: A Nation's Legacy in Pictures is a stunning pictorial narrative of this ageless martial art. For the first time in the world, the art will be showcased in breathtaking pictures that captures the vast span of its influence on Sri Lanka's history and culture. From artefacts never seen before to combat techniques that have remained in supreme secrecy for centuries; and illustrating the art's vibrant esoteric rituals as well as its secretive and deadly node science, Angampora: A Nation's Legacy in Pictures brings to the world an unparalleled work of Sri Lankan research and photography. Written by Deshamanya Ajantha Mahanthaarachchi, the heir of the Korathota Aracchis, one of Sri Lanka's oldest surviving Angam lineages, and photographed by Reza Akram, this book is a seminal work on an undiscovered cultural legacy of Sri Lanka.

Sri Lanka marked 70 years of independence on February 4th 2018. While there is much to celebrate in our overthrowing a 500-year yoke of colonial rule and embracing democratic politics, it is undeniable that Sri Lanka's post-independence trajectory has also been rather turbulent and bloody. Communal riots, youth insurrections, natural disasters and a protracted civil war have cast a long, brooding shadow across recent decades. Any reflection on our past must therefore acknowledge the positive advances we have made as a nation as well as question and learn from our less positive experiences.

The Archive of Memory is a collection of 70 narrative fragments that offer compelling, personalized perspectives on these past 70 years. They recall significant moments in our post-independence history through mundane, everyday objects as well as unique artefacts and souvenirs. 

Sri Lanka marked 70 years of independence on February 4th 2018. While there is much to celebrate in our overthrowing a 500-year yoke of colonial rule and embracing democratic politics, it is undeniable that Sri Lanka's post-independence trajectory has also been rather turbulent and bloody. Communal riots, youth insurrections, natural disasters and a protracted civil war have cast a long, brooding shadow across recent decades. Any reflection on our past must therefore acknowledge the positive advances we have made as a nation as well as question and learn from our less positive experiences.

The Archive of Memory is a collection of 70 narrative fragments that offer compelling, personalized perspectives on these past 70 years. They recall significant moments in our post-independence history through mundane, everday objects as well as unique artefacts and souvenirs. 

The exciting sequel to Mythil's Secret

Mythil must put aside his problems with a school bully when his secret friend Asiri suddenly regains a part of his memory. But is Asiri's fantastic story from wartime Ceylon a figment of Mythil's imagination or did it really happen? Can Mythil use what he has learned on Asiri's Quest to overcome his problems at school? Join Mythil and Asiri on another spine-chilling, time-travelling adventure to find out!

Mythil's Secret is that rare thing in children's fiction - a work that discusses both adult and children's issues equally well... Yet, what takes Mythil's Secret beyond much children's literature, and where it really succeeds, is in its willingness to address the strengths, weaknesses and responsibilities of grown-ups, too, especially in relation to kids.
CHA, an Asian Literary Journal

Approved by the Ministry of Education

'Allah shouldn't have revealed so much to the Prophet. It only makes pious people like us suffer.'

So muses Khalid Khan a seventeen year old Afghan boy living in Melbourne. Khalid is like any other boy of his age in Australia; he loves his Footy, his mum's cooking and takes every opportunity to tease his sister Aisha. He believes in Allah although he sometimes wonders whether it is such a good idea to convert everybody in the world to Islam.
The quiet suburban life of Khalid's family is turned upside down one Friday morning when they have an unwelcome visitor. What follows is a hilarious – and poignant – intercultural encounter in multicultural Australia.

'Channa has a wonderful ear for the patois of teenagers. He helped me to empathise with the lives of people, whose religion is intertwined with their culture, and he did it with humour and insight which, given the political tenor of the times we live in, cannot be a bad thing.' - Michael Cooke, Doryanthes

De Ceylan, la fascinante, au Sri Lanka de nos jours, sur fond de guerre civile entre Cinghalais et Tamouls, Beach Boy. Illusion tropicale raconte le parcours de Nissanka, un jeune bouddhiste, pauvre mais très rusé, dont le seul capital est sa grande beauté. Prêt à tout pour assurer la survie des siens, il remet ses rêves de bonne fortune entre les mains des étrangers de passage. Eléonore, par amour, tentera de changer le cours de sa destinée. Empoisonnée peu à peu par l'argent, leur histoire improbable tente de résister aux mensonges du jeune homme, alors que ressurgissent tragiquement dans sa vie les fantômes du passé quand Nissanka retrouve son ami d'enfance, devenu l'un des chefs des Tigres tamouls.

L'auteur nous entraîne à la découverte d'un pays à la richesse culturelle foisonnante, d'un peuple attachant et déchiré : un coin de Paradis avant le Tsunami.merveilleux pays à la beauté envoûtante.

Marie-Noëlle Seignolles est la fille de l'écrivain fantastique Claude Seignolle. Adolescente, elle fréquente le dernier salon littéraire de Lise Deharme et côtoie des auteurs aussi divers que Marcel Jouhandeau, Lawrence Durrell, Jacques Bergier, Marcel Allain (le père de Fantômas), entre autres... Curieuse du monde, particulièrement de l'Asie, elle tombe sous le charme de Ceylan. Pendant sept ans, elle y séjourne régulièrement, en temps de guerre comme de paix, recueillant témoignages, informations et documents sur ce pays à la beauté envoûtante Elle fait du Sri Lanka la toile de fond de son premier roman.

A rags to riches picaresque for a man who gains the world and loses his soul.

SLIGHTLY YELLOWING & DISCOLORING PAGES.

Wheeler dealer, blackmailer and black marketer, Sam Kandy is not a very nice person. But he is a hell of a guy. Beggar's Feast is a novel about a man who lives in defiance of fate. Sam Kandy was born in 1889 to low prospects in a Ceylon village and died one hundred years later as the wealthy headman of the same village, a self-made shipping magnate, and father of sixteen, three times married and twice widowed. In four parts, this enthralling novel tells Sam's story from his boyhood-when his parents, convinced by his horoscope that he would be a blight upon the family, abandon him at the gates of a distant temple-through his dramatic escape from the temple and journey across Ceylon to Australia and Singapore, before his bold return to the Ceylon village he once called home. There he tries to win recognition for his success in the world-at any cost.

A novel about family, pride, and ambition, about what it takes for one man to make something out of nothing, set on a gorgeous, troubled island caught between tradition and modernity, "Beggar's Feast" establishes Boyagoda as a major voice in international literature.

'Let us neither over nor under state the case – this is a beautifully written book. It reads like a hot curry balanced against a mango relish' – Hubert O Hearn, Winnipeg Review

'A post-colonial Gatsby Beggars Feast is a picaresque about the clash of the worlds and the revenge of empires, about fate and history and harbours and birthright and brothels and moneylenders and metal-benders' – Mark Jarman , The Globe and Mail

'Boyagoda's narrative voice... is as lush as the tropical landscape of Ceylon, this voice, with its endless sentences, its mad cataloguing of things – a style sinuous, declamatory, periphrastic, peppered with extravagant metaphors and odd phrases' - Philip Marchand, National Post

Longlisted for the Dublin IMPAC prize

A Study of the Caste System in Northern Sri Lanka

Caste, while being one of the dominant socio-economic institutions in the Indian and Sri Lankan societies is also one of the most complicated because of its multiple ramifications. Numerous scholars and researchers have made in-depth studies of the subject and their conclusions in turn have evoked further interest and queries on the subject.

The present study offers a substantial detour into the operational aspects of the system. The main focus of the study lies in the historical reconstruction from the pre-colonial period. An innovative turn of the study is its efforts to cull evidence and information from the literary productions authored by the very victims who suffered under the system. Anti-caste movements and their socio-political transformations form one section. Speaking to and listening from the victims and the perpetrators is the most revealing part of this study, which is a contemporaneous and existent situation. This process has also revealed the different modes of caste operation in the three different regions in Northern Sri Lanka which were covered in the research. 

This book is a compilation of essays on several themes intended to provoke thought on and promote understanding about everyday political and social life on an island facing constant geopolitical and domestic political challenges. The themes of this book are: 4/21 Terror Attack and National Security; China, Belt and Road Initiative and Sri Lankan Foreign Policy; Geopolitics; Sustaining Democracy and Facing a Pandemic; and Domestic Political Stability, Leadership, and Economic Crime. 

Most essays have captured the domestic viewpoint from which to begin drawing a wider picture of the global geopolitical tapestry. The chapters enframe a variety of domestic political incidents, conflicts of various actors, and the conundrum of an island in the Indian Ocean, stuck in the triangular maritime power dynamics among the United States, China and India. They also examine the influences from foreign netions towards Sri Lanka's foreign policy and the dynamics of security challenges in the larger geosphere and marine sphere of South Asia and the Indian Ocean respectively. The chapters offer the reader an Olympian viewpoint of the challenges Sri Lanka faces, attempting to find connections and patterns towards greater external geopolitical influence and how it impacts domestic politics.

Winner of the Gratiaen Prize 2020

When a poor young boy succumbs to his injuries in the ICU, no one considers it anything but the result of a tragic accident. No one, that is, but Lotus, an introverted daydreamer who is drifting into a career in medicine more by parental choice than her own.

As a chance witness to his final moments, she is unwittingly drawn into his case and soon finds herself both angry and upset trying to understand what really happened to him.

Why, for instance, did the boy dash recklessly across the road into the path of a passing vehicle? Why did he have a contact with the same name as hers on his phone? What was his link to the luxurious Lotus Hospital?

Her sense of justice aroused, she follows a trail that takes her through the hospitals, slums and mansions of Colombo, juggling all this within her gritty life as a medical student. 

"Carmel Miranda's first novel creates a unique narrative that combines a sensitive and nuanced understanding of the Lankan medical world with a powerful and moving, yet unsentimental, psychological account of love, loss and reconciliation." ~ Arjuna Parakrama, Senior Professor of English, University of Peradeniya

Cet ouvrage est né de la rencontre de deux femmes : une sage-femme birmane traditionnelle âgée, et une Française alors jeune, désireuse de découvrir la façon dont la première exerçait son métier. Au fil des mois, une relation profonde se noue, non dénuée de tensions et de contradictions. Il en a résulté ces récits d'instants de leur amitié, puis instants de vie que la vieille dame considérait comme les plus importants pour elle.

A translation of a manuscript by Eudelin de Jonville who came to the island of Ceylon in 1798

Available in French and English. de Jonville came to Ceylon as a naturalist and a member of the administrative staff recruited by Frederick North, first British governor of the new colony. During the seven years he spent in Ceylon, he travelled, investigated, questioned, counted and measured, drew, painted and above all wrote an astonishing manuscript.

'The co-author Marie-Hèlène Estève of this new book should be congratulated for her painstaking detailed biographical research on this 'most elusive of the naturalist'. In other words Joseph Marie Eudelin Marve de Jonville has re-emerged from this splendid biographical account of Jonville. The book is replete with seven water color drawings and several other black and white drawings' – Hemantha Situge

A journey with Jayanthi Kuru-Utumpala and Johann Peries

The duo met in 2011, and made their first expedition together in 2012, climbing Island Peak in the Nepali Himalayas, which allowed them to realise that they worked well together as a team. On the way they spotted Mount Everest and shared their dream of climbing it one day with each other. In 2014 they climbed Mount Kilimanjaro together. Following this, they began working towards the challenge of Mount Everest.

This is the story of their journey in 2016.

Eyesha is a baby elephant who is just learning the etiquette and behaviour expected of the largest land mammal in the world. She visits the Minneriya Tank with her family for the first time to participate in the annual Great Gathering. Curious and adventurous, she makes new friends, but is soon lost and in trouble. How will little Eyesha find her way back to her mother?

With spectacular illustrations by Manoshi de Silva that capture the beauty of the region and a well-researched Glossary and Fun Facts page that encourage children to appreciate animals in the wild, Eyesha and the Great Elephant Gathering is an entertaining and educational book for children.

"That's it. After reading this book I want to quit the human race and join the far more civilized world of Asian Elephants. Highly recommended for any parent who wants to open their children's eyes to the wonder and warmth of other species on our planet" - Nancy Heinzel (Amazon Review)

The life and times of Jeronis Pieris, as seen through his letters