Books

The controversial Professor of Mathematics, scholar and lawyer from Vavuniya – C. Suntharalingam, was a member of independent Ceylon's first cabinet of Ministers alongside D.S Senanayake, S.W.R.D Bandaranaike, J.R Jayewardene, J.L Kotelawala, Sir Oliver Goonetilleke, T.B Jayah, Dudley Senanayake etc. Resigning from his Ministerial post in an era of rising communal tension, he composed open letters to his grandchildren, venting his disenchantment, and decrying the direction that Ceylon's newly gained independence was taking under the stewardship of her elected officials. These letters, serialised in newspapers over fifty years ago, present an insight into a version of events that contributed to our turbulent, recent history.

SNOW is award-winning author Anne Ranasinghe's latest literary endeavour. With a preface by Dr. Lakshmi de Silva, SNOW and Other Stories is divided into four sections and comprises prose, poems and articles, some of which have been published before but are now out of print.

While it focuses literary critics and faithful readers on the variety and extent of her skills, for new readers it will provide an exciting and stimulating voyage through different, not infrequently startling areas of experience.
Dr. Lakshmi de Silva

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Incidents in the life of a surgeon, working in Ceylon Sri Lanka, from 1965 to 2005

"One month after assuming duties as DMO, I took delivery of the car in Colombo. That evening, with me seated by his side, my driver drove it through the night to Koslande 200 miles away. We reached home at about 2 a.m. the next day and went to sleep, dog-tired. On the next morning, we found a patch of oil beneath one wheel of the newly acquired car. The fault was a leak of brake-fluid. A faulty brake-washer from the wheel-cylinder had caused it. It was easily replaced, though it seemed an inauspicious beginning to a relationship with my new vehicle."

As a natural sequel to the hugely successful Remembered Vignettes, Dr. Philip Veerasingam traces his trajectory as a country doctor posted in remote and rural parts of Sri Lanka, culminating as Consultant Surgeon in Colombo. Travel with him on this fascinating journey and re-live the difficult working conditions and the necessity to improvise solutions on the job.

There comes a time when a girl must decide whether to leave or stay. This is the journey to that moment of choice.

Within the confines of the Galle Fort, Yasmin and her best friend Penny enjoy an idyllic childhood of sea swims, bike rides, and movies in a world that was fun, glamorous and free. But Yasmin comes from a tightly knit, conformist community that thrives on tradition, family bonds and honour, and eventually her friendship with Penny must end.

This sharply insightful novel depicts a young Muslim girl's struggle to balance the traditions of a loving yet conservative father, who wants to keep her safe, against the more liberal Westernized Sri Lankan world outside. Stay, Daughter is a beautifully crafted story suffused with love, humour, and compassion. A novel that provides a glimpse into the microcosmic Galle Fort Muslim community of the 1960s post-independent Sri Lanka.

A unique and important voice of our time - that of Muslim women.

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A classic story of identity, love and Australia's modern heritage.

Cello States comes from the town of Corduroy and is definitely from the wrong side of the tracks. He escapes his life of drugs and gangs in the world of books, language and words, but when his father, a small time drug dealer clashes with a rival gang, he is forced to leave home. This drives Cello on a crime spree that eventually takes him to Melbourne, where he meets and falls in love with Oya Seyesene, a girl far removed from his world of violence and poverty. Half Sri Lankan, beautiful Oya is a child of privilege who despite having everything in life yearns for something else. Encouraged by her parents to find herself, Oya starts working at the Foundry, an avant-garde theatre where Cello has been working for the past few years. But it is a relationship fraught with tension and in danger of being overshadowed by the secret that Cello was part of a terrible crime that involved her family.

"An artful, beautifully written novel, dismantling the myth of a classless Australia. In turn black comic, lyrical and dark, Oya, Cello, and Planet Earth is wide ranging and insightful, exploring the rigid boundaries of power and privilege but also the possibilities of finding connection against the odds" - Kate Ryan, winner, Writers Prize, 2015 Melbourne Prize for Literature

Who is Malinda Albert Kablana? How did he die?

Renegade war photographer Maali Almeida has to solve his own murder. Does that sound fun? It would if there weren't so much bloody red-tape to get through. Oh and it's not as though anyone alive actually seems to miss him, and it certainly doesn't help that his girlfriend is related to his boyfriend. Worst of all, it's all those goddamn memories of war, constantly interrupted by the overly chatty dead folks breezing through the afterlife. Besides, he's so busy solving his ethical dilemmas that there's barely any time to solve a murder- even if it's his own. 

A compulsively readable dark comedy about life, death, and everything in between, Chats with the Dead, exposes the plight of a country caught in civil war. Its deliciously compelling absurdity holds you in thrall right from the very first page, and up to its startling denouement, constantly upending its own premise with its staggering humanity.

Shehan Karunatilaka delivers a classic whodunit with a brilliant twist. 

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But he was lying there beside her, waiting for her answer. A stranger. They were strangers.

She turned slowly away from him, towards the window. And against the bright blue sky, she saw the storks flying away in formation, an arrow in the sky. They'd started their long journey at last, back to their other home. They'd dared to dream again. And roam the skies for something they'd loved and lost, perhaps.

'Perhaps,' she said turning back.

In poetic vignettes set against the fascinating exotics of Australia and France, Chandani Lokugé weaves a haunting and meditative story on the spectral gains and losses of travel, the nature of its transience. Through it, she dignifies with grace and tenderness, our unassuageable yearning, when we have lost everything and even ourselves, to anchor to something, someone, somewhere, and the unexpected moment of our arrival.

"A haunting, mystical reading experience, suffused with history, art, and recovery from trauma. An inspired travelogue... the damaged genius of Van Gogh brooding over the narrative, with hints of both joy and anguish." - Chris Ringrose

Sri Lanka conjures images of an island of incredible beauty,

a tropical paradise of golden beaches, mist-shrouded mountains carpeted with tea fields, 2000-year-old cities and archaeological monuments - a land of apparent peace and tranquility. It also evokes a brutal, thirty-year civil war, riven with death, destruction, and racial divides.

Here is a story of a boy growing up in Sri Lanka in the midst of all that beauty and in the run-up to those bitter times. It paints a picture at once familiar and unexpected, with storytelling that is revealing, deeply personal, funny, and sometimes emotional. 

Today, young minds are often spent immersed in virtual worlds where long conversations are a thing of the past. To pass on his family history from generation to generation, a migrant father from Sri Lanka writes a record of his family for his son who grew up in Canada. This book is written as a gift to his son and posterity before the story is lost to the shifting sands of time. 

This is a tale that brings back memories and nostalgia, it is a tale that you will not expect, one that will surprise and charm you.

Dense green forests in Yala, white-sand coasts in Trincomalee, azure waters off the south coast, Anuradhapura's ancient temples, and cricket.

Civil war, political assassinations, internally displaced communities, industrial-scale corruption. 

All are Sri Lanka. As are smug bureaucrats, nosy neighbours. and stray dogs with serious axes to grind.

Through the eyes of Andrew Fidel Fernando, cricket writer par excellence, both a local and a tourist in his home country, Sri Lanka comes to life as he hurtles down hills in Kandy, breathes in the history at the rock fortress of Sigiriya, grapples with the aftermath of war in Jaffna, and has himself evicted from restaurants near Galle. Weaving through all manner of villages, paddy fields, mountains, jungles and marshlands, and pausing for the pests at grimy guesthouses and the vacationers of luxury hotels, Fernando has the time for every genre of person and wildlife in this chaotic, exquisite, frustrating, bewitching, tumultuous and intoxicating land.

Hilariously witty, yet wistfully sombre, Upon A Sleepless Isle is the story of a country and a people caught between long historical traditions and global capitalism, resulting in this ingenious paradise.

"A hilarious, nuanced and elegant work that grapples with Sri Lanka's complexities, and celebrates its beauty" - Shehan Karunatilaka

Surrounded by magnificent mountains, the city of Kandy, home of the Temple of the Sacred Tooth and the Royal Palace, was the capital of Lanka for about three hundred years. Gananath Obeysekere paints a vivid portrait of the kings of these great green highlands of Kandy, revealing a complex and advanced society every bit as violent as any other civilization. Focusing on kings Vimaladharmasuriya 1, Rajasinha II, Sri Vijaya Rajasinha and Kirti Sri Rajasinha, he brings the Kandyan monarchy to life, depicting them not as mythic figures but as real flesh and blood, larger than life characters who ruled over the last citadel of Lankan aristocracy

The fabled Moroccan Scholar Ibn Battuta is reputed to have travelled further through the medieval world than any other explorer, including Marco Polo. When Ameena Hussein sees a grimy street sign in Puttalam bearing his name, it precipitates a quest of her own, tracking Ibn Battuta’s trajectory in Lanka or Sarandib as he knew it.

From the pearl rich north-western coast, through Sri Pada known as the Mount of Lanka, down to Dewinuwara with its magnificent temple hosting dancing girls and Brahmin priests and onwards to Colombo – already a formidable maritime presence, she follows his trajectory to rejoin his starting point at Puttalam. Along the way, she seeks Ibn Battuta’s memory in the minds of men, and discovers a land brimming with myth and legend as colourful as the traveler himself.

A book for those who love the marvelous, multicultural land of Lanka – Tim Mackintosh Smith
A rich tapestry, bringing to life 14th century Sri Lanka – Shyam Selvadurai
A beautiful, sweeping book that shines light into the past – Nayomi Munaweera
A fabulously entertaining and remarkable feat of research – Nira Wickremasinghe

Baby Baba is still learning where to poop. So he poops everywhere except where he should. He's also learning about the pooping habits of pandas, vultures, sloths, beetles, and even mites. Maybe they can teach him that the potty is his friend.

Cheeky, educational, and fun, Where Shall I Poop? is a rhyming book for toddlers. New from the creators of Please Don't Put That In Your Mouth, it is the perfect potty training companion.

Illustrated by Lalith Karunatilaka 

Rukmini Attygalle's debut collection of eleven stories reflect inner strength in times of need. They take the reader into the everyday lives of ordinary people; from a little girl asserting her independence with her family in England, to a newly widowed woman unexpectedly revisiting her past, to a surprising friend in a street beggar. Of Saris and Grapefruit is a collection that layers poignant textures and feelings from one story to another, that captures significant life changes with entertaining and revealing outcomes.

"Rukmini Attygalle's first published collection of short stories makes for delightful reading.... From them emerge a palpable freshness and feminine ingenuity." ~ Nanda Pethiagoda Wanasundera, Journalist and Author of Parallel Lives

"These stories are engaging and vibrant." ~ Leelananda de Silva, Public Servant, UN consultant, and Author of The Long Littleness of Life: a Memoir of Government, the United Nations, Family and Friends

"This collection of stories displays many clear insights, much deep feeling, and also an engaging sense of humour" ~ Michael O'Leary, Writer and Columnist

L.T.P. Manjusri was born in 1902 in Aluthgama, a small fishing village near Galle in Southern Sri Lanka, and died a national hero in 1982, having had an extraordinary life. His story is a commentary on the cultural history of 20th Century Sri Lanka. His contribution to art and the history of art spans the previous century to the birth and development of modern art in the country. 

Manjusri's works are found in many galleries, including the Sapumal Foundation and the National Art Gallery in Colombo, Horniman Museum in London, Kunst Historiches Museum in Vienna, New York Public Library, Columbia University Library, Metropolitan Museum in New York and in numerous private collections.

After giving up robes in 1949, he worked as a journalist at Lake House Newspapers until his retirement in 1968. He wrote more than 200 articles pertaining to temple paintings, Asian art and culture. Recognised both in Sri Lanka and internationally, his many accolades include the Ramon Magsasay Award. He died a national hero.

He is a revolutionary,  but not the violent kind. 

Instead, Hemaka Amarasuriya transformed corporate Sri Lanka's method of thinking, asserting a quiet firmness that soon became his trademark style. Hemaka Amarasuriya is arguably Sri Lanka's 'intrapreneurship' pioneer, propelling the sewing machine and its brand to heights unknown and horizons unimagined. Singer Sri Lanka is now a case study for marketing and branding experts: Philip Kotler himself uses Singer Sri Lanka as a glowing example of a successful company that was always ahead of the curve. Amassing accolades for his unfettered thought processes that built teams, brands and portfolios, Hemaka remains in the lead as an undisputed Marketing Guru. He is renowned for marrying an unorthodox management style with non-conformist team building and revolutionary leadership approaches that are today tangibly visible within not just Singer Sri Lanka, NDB and Sri Lanka Insurance which he spearheaded, but also in the past on the sports grounds, be it cricket, rugby, hockey or motorsports.

However, this is not merely a story about a brain ticking continually, pioneering pathways and charting new journeys; it is the story of an individual who faced highs and lows at work and at home. Yet, the 5'11" mogul continues to stand tall and proud, wielding an indomitable strength that is always visible, riding the times at full gallop and indelibly inking history, all the while leading, motivating, mentoring, guiding, and most significantly, pioneering. 

You've always wondered how squirrels got their distinctive stripes. Well, once upon a time, clever little squirrels joined a legendary battle that took place in the land of Lanka. As reward for their valour they received a sign of affection that they carry even today! Read all about it with your children, from this beautifully illustrated collectible book.