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

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 memoir 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 memoir 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.

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. 

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

Bitter Berry (Rs 450); Growing Up and other Stories (Rs 100); Surgeon of the Wilderness (Rs 500); Brave Island (Rs 680); Mountain Rd (Rs 650); Moon in the Water (Rs 750); Christine (Rs 690)

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

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.

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

Winner of the Gratiaen Prize in 2010

Mythil thinks he is in for a boring time at Archchi's big old house but then things begin to happen. Who lives in the deep jungle and are they friends or foes? How can he make his parents believe the mysterious things that keep happening to him? And how can a young boy like him outwit a clever and sinister enemy on his own?
Mythil's Secret is a story about a young boy's discover of just how strong the bonds of family and friendship can be. Join him on this spine-tingling adventure as he learns to look within himself for courage he never knew he had.

Rambukwella has got into the imaginative mind of a pre-teenage boy and has given a wonderful story for children with a lot of local flavour. The book is certainly a page turner for the adventurous young – Elmo Jayawardene

Mythil's Secret is proof that there can be such a genre as Sri Lankan Fantasy Fiction. It's the sort of book you can read to your kids at night and find yourself equally arrested as they are whilst the story unfolds – Leisure Times

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

Louis M and Kiran are crazy about cricket!

One weekend, practice brings an unexpected invitation to join a cricket match with the big boys. Louis is determined to make a good impression but will he drop a catch? Will Kiran be better than him? And will Louis ruin his chances in cricket forever? NOT IF HE CAN HELP IT!