Elephant complex
Subtitle: travels in Sri Lanka
By: John Gimlette
Edition: First United States edition.
Published: 2016
Language: eng
Number of pages: 399
ISBN-13: 9780385351270
Subjects: Social life and customs; Historic sites; Natural history; Travel; History; Description and travel
Description: "From one of our most widely praised travel writers--author of Wild Coast and Panther Soup--an eye-opening journey through Sri Lanka that, in the author's inimitable mixture of history, observation, and interpretation, reveals the island nation to us as never before. Writing with his signature eye for the unusually telling detail, his sense of urbane wonder, and his investigative desire for the whole story, John Gimlette takes us from Sri Lanka's exuberant capital city of Colombo to the dry interior where more than 5,300 wild elephants congregate around its ancient reservoirs; from the Portuguese-built forts of cinnamon country to the tsunami-ravaged south-east; from the tea plantations of the highlands and the Shangri-la-ish city of Kandy to the desiccated Jaffna Peninsula in the north. He examines Sri Lanka's colonial history (Portuguese, British, Dutch and Arab); the centuries-old strife between Sinhalese and Tamils; and the most recent civil war, which lasted from 1983 to 2009. He describes his encounters with world-class cricketers, terrorists, a former president, ancient tribesmen, British expats, survivors of the civil war massacres, and with the island's amazing flora and fauna, including the world's greatest concentration of leopards. He discovers a place of both extravagant beauty and profound devastation, a place capable of being both heavenly and hellish at the same time, and succeeds in bringing it to vibrant, fascinating life on the page"--
Notes: "A Borzoi book"--Title page verso.

Includes bibliographical references and index.
Table of contents: title: Map; title: Colombo Jumbo; title: All Quiet Among the Reservoir Giants; title: The Cinnamon Forts; title: A State of Perpetual Vacation; title: The Garden in the Sky; title: Kandy; title: Land of Hope and Tea; title: The Wild East; title: Trinco, Trinco, Little Star; title: Multi-barrel Love Enforcer; title: The Jaffna Peninsula; title: The Shoes on the Shore; title: Green As Ever; title: Afterword.