Books

Packs of flashcards showing the letters of the Sinhala and Tamil alphabets, beautifully illustrated with watercolour paintings by Lynda Gill.

The Sinhala set consists of 40 cards, the Tamil set 35. The front of each card shows one Sinhala/Tamil letter, together with an illustration of a related word; the back shows the letter again, together with the example word, written three times: in Sinhala/Tamil script, in phonetic transcription, and in English. In each case, the target letter is highlighted in red in Sinhala/Tamil script, and so is the corresponding letter/syllable in the phonetic transcription. Thus each card enables the learner not only to learn a Sinhala/Tamil letter (and see how it is used in the context of a word), but also to learn a new word, what it means, how to pronounce it, and how to write it in Sinhala/Tamil script.

Further information, together with sample cards, can be found on the website www.mirisgala.net

Brand New Release by TAMBAPANNI ACADEMIC PUBLISHERS

For hundreds of years, the island of Sri Lanka was a crucial stopover for people and goods in the Indian Ocean. For the Dutch East India Company, it was also a crossroads in the Indian Ocean slave trade. Slavery was present in multiple forms in Sri Lanka—then Ceylon—when the British conquered the island in the late eighteenth century and began to gradually abolish slavery. Yet the continued presence of enslaved people in Sri Lanka in the nineteenth century has practically vanished from collective memory in both the Sinhalese and Tamil communities.

Nira Wickramasinghe uncovers the traces of slavery in the history and memory of the Indian Ocean world, exploring moments of revolt in the lives of enslaved people in the wake of abolition. She tells the stories of Wayreven, the slave who traveled in the palanquin of his master; Selestina, accused of killing her child; Rawothan, who sought permission for his son to be circumcised; and others, enslaved or emancipated, who challenged their status. Drawing on legal cases, petitions, and other colonial records to recover individual voices and quotidian moments, Wickramasinghe offers a meditation on the archive of slavery. She examines how color-based racial thinking gave way to more nuanced debates about identity, complicating conceptions of blackness and racialization. A deeply interdisciplinary book with a focus on recovering subaltern resistance, Slave in a Palanquin offers a vital new portrait of the local and transnational worlds of the colonial-era Asian slave trade in the Indian Ocean. 

"A compellingly important work by one of Sri Lanka's best historians. Slave in a Palanquin challenges narratives of purity and authenticity on an island where murmurings about descent are far too common but where memories of enslavement have been erased. By turning to forgotten records and traces, Wickramasinghe insists on the subaltern, the resistant, and the particular. As the book proceeds, Sri Lanka moves into the centre of key debates in world history about labour, memory, freedom and power" ~ Sujit Sivasundaram, author of Islanded: Britain, Sri Lanka, and the Bounds of an Indian Ocean Colony

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

Read an excerpt!

Turning back, she saw his blurred figure through the lace curtain, an abstract pattern of their intense criss-crossed liaison. He was looking at her. What was he seeing? How isolated we are, she thought, how unconnected...

One late spring morning, Uma awakens to a life in which her relationships – to lover, to husband, to son – seem unbearably tangled. In capturing its searing and intimate moments, the story transcends into a meditation on love and betrayal, grief and redemption.

'The heart-breaking clarity of Chandani Laokugé's writing resonates long after reading Softly, As I Leave You.'
Susan Kurosawa

'Chandani Lokugé writes with unfailing verbal felicity, in the language of the men and women of our time, over the whole range of human communication.'
Ashley Halpé

This book attempts to pinpoint, through a study of the island's past and present histories, what constitutes the basis of its multiple identities, which has been constantly nourished by outside elements and shaped over the past two thousand years.

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.

Alupola to Jaffna 1940-1960

The waterfall at Alupola was the centre of my childhood existence. Its subdued roar and 'white water' gave one a sense of peace and tranquility. Bright sunny days would light up the entire valley. The cry of the Brahminy kite wheeling in ecstasy high up in the blue sky would enchant us.

Local tea estate workers of South Indian origin, claimed that on misty moonlit nights, the seven mythical 'Karthigai virgins', came to the pool below the second waterfall, to frolic and bathe. This story added a fairytale beauty to the Alupola Falls. Often, walking past it on moonlit nights with my father, I would peer through the mist and thunder of the waterfalls, looking for the 'Seven Karthigai Virgins'. I never got a glimpse of them. The locals claimed that anyone who did glimpse them would be struck mad by their beauty. Then he or she would roam the earth looking for another sight of them, abandoning all worldly pleasures.

Maybe it was my luck not to see them.

The third outstanding memoir by Dr Veerasingam which lovingly chronicles days gone by.

Packs of flashcards showing the letters of the Sinhala and Tamil alphabets, beautifully illustrated with watercolour paintings by Lynda Gill.

The Sinhala set consists of 40 cards, the Tamil set 35. The front of each card shows one Sinhala/Tamil letter, together with an illustration of a related word; the back shows the letter again, together with the example word, written three times: in Sinhala/Tamil script, in phonetic transcription, and in English. In each case, the target letter is highlighted in red in Sinhala/Tamil script, and so is the corresponding letter/syllable in the phonetic transcription. Thus each card enables the learner not only to learn a Sinhala/Tamil letter (and see how it is used in the context of a word), but also to learn a new word, what it means, how to pronounce it, and how to write it in Sinhala/Tamil script.

Further information, together with sample cards, can be found on the website www.mirisgala.net

This books is aimed at all visitors who want to communicate effectively in the Tamil speaking areas of Sri Lanka be they tourists, working for an NGO or for a business investing in the region.

Anne Abayasekara started her career in 1947 as the first female Sri Lankan staff journalist.

In the highly productive decades that followed she wrote on a variety of themes. This book covers the themes of the changing role of women, love of motherland, and family and home life. It also includes a section on how others viewed her. The book is bound to captivate readers - both those acquainted with her writing and those with no knowledge of it, stirring their hearts and minds.

'She always managed to marshal her material and then produce a coherent, beautiful pattern, an expression of simple but vibrant language.' - Siri Ranawake

 

 

Follow in the footsteps of Vibhu, a little church mouse, as he remembers a difficult time in his life.

Vibhu and his friends are caught up in the Easter Sunday bomb attack in Sri Lanka as they observe the Mass from their mouse hole. Amid the chaos, Vibhu realizes that his best friend, Seha, is missing. He makes his way through the debris and faces many obstacles in his search for his missing friend. In the end, Vibhu learns to deal with tragedy, loss, and grief.

The story recalls the events of that tragic day and the aftermath of the attacks through the eyes of these little mice. It ensures that those who lost their lives will never be forgotten. The story will give both children and adults who read it closure and strengthen their faith in humanity.

"The linguistic style is simple yet expressive of the fear and sadness that gripped everyone on that occasion, and the sentiments of sorrow and sharing that animated their minds and hearts. Yet, the author shows how this saddest experience challenged everyone to aspire for the noblest of goals in life: the resolve to rise from the ashes of tragedy to true fraternity, care, and concern for others." ~ His Eminence Malcom Cardinal Ranjith

100% of profits to the victims of the Easter Sunday attacks

 The April 21st Consensus' marks a landmark in senior journalist Lynn Ockersz's years-long poetic journey. It's a penetrating mirror to our times. 

The Big Girl & Other Stories is a retro-collection of stories by the talented posthumous author Alagu Subramaniam.

They recount scenes of life in Jaffna more than 50 years ago. The book which had disappeared from circulation has now been updated and reprinted in its entirety.
These stories evocatively capture the ethos of an era now past and will leave you nostalgic for a simpler time.

"Mr Subramaniayam could have had a sound practice at the English Bar, but he preferred to pursue his literary work, which is of a higher order" - Lester Hutchinson, D es L., Former MP (British House of Commons)

"Stories told sardonically and succinctly" - Philip Day, Sunday Times (London)

Read an excerpt!

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.

A requiem for Sri Vikrama Rajasinha

On 24 Jan 1816, the captured king of Kandy was escorted on board the Cornwallis together with his queens, relatives and servants. Almost a month later, King Sri Vikrama Rajasinha arrives at the Vellore Fort in India, to spend his remaining days in exile. Thus ends the tragic tale of the Doomed King of Lanka.

Using Kadaimpot, vittipot and documents from English servicemen, Gananath Obeysekere reveals a portrait of a king who was much maligned and betrayed by those he trusted. The Doomed King makes for fascinating reading where a master spy, a Machiavellian governor and an opportunistic nobleman together, bring about the fall of the Kandyan Kingdom.

'This book confirms that Obeysekere, probably the most distinguished living anthropologist, remains at the peak of his prodigious scholarly powers.' - Rajeev Bhargava, Professor, CSDS, Delhi

'Essential reading, not only for its accounts of colonial rule in Kandy, but also for providing an example of the long-lasting persistence of historical knowledge that was constructed to justify imperial expansion.' - John Rogers, American Inst of Sri Lankan Studies

A practical and consice guide to discover and explore nearly seventy fascinating sites.

For each site we have given an English, Sinhala and Tamil name to help when asking for directions, a drawing, a brief description, directions to reach it, a GPS position for a precise location, and a map to help you to get there.