Elephant Complex: Travels in Sri Lanka

Elephant Complex: Travels in Sri Lanka

No one sees the world quite like John Gimlette. As The New York Times once noted, â€œhe writes with enormous wit, indignation, and a heightened sense of the absurd.â€ Writing for both the adventurer and the armchair traveler, he has an eye for unusually telling detail, a sense of wonder, and compelling curiosity for the inside story. This time, he travels to Sri Lanka, a country only now emerging from twenty-six years of civil war. Delving deep into the nationâ€™s story, Gimlette provides us with an astonishing, multifaceted portrait of the island today.

His travels reveal the country as never before. Beginning in the exuberant capital, Colombo (â€œa hint of anarchy everywhereâ€), he ventures out in all directions: to the dry zones where the islandâ€™s 5,800 wild elephants congregate around ancient reservoirs; through cinnamon country with its Portuguese forts; to the â€œBible Beltâ€ of Buddhismâ€”the tsunami-ravaged southeast coast; then up into the great green highlands (â€œthe garden in the skyâ€) and Kandy, the countryâ€™s eccentric, aristocratic Shangri-la. Along the way, a wild and often desperate history takes shape, a tale of great colonies (Arab, Portuguese, British, and Dutch) and of the cultural divisions that still divide this society. Before long, weâ€™re in Jaffna and the Vanni, crucibles of the recent conflict. These areasâ€”the hottest, driest, and least hospitableâ€”have been utterly devastated by war and are only now struggling to their feet.

But this is also a story of friendship and remarkable encounters. In the course of his journey, Gimlette meets farmers, war heroes, ancient tribesmen, world-class cricketers, terrorists, a former president, old planters, survivors of great massacresâ€”and perhaps some of their perpetrators. Thatâ€™s to say nothing of the islandâ€™s beguiling fauna: elephants, crocodiles, snakes, storks, and the greatest concentration of leopards on Earth.
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Here is a land of extravagant beauty and profound devastation, of ingenuity and catastrophe, possessed of both a volatile past and an uncertain futureâ€”a place capable of being at once heavenly and hellishâ€”all brought to vibrant, fascinating life here on the page.

From the Hardcover edition.
Country USA
Manufacturer Vintage
Binding Kindle Edition
ReleaseDate 2016-02-16
Format Kindle eBook

Country	USA
Manufacturer	Vintage
Binding	Kindle Edition
ReleaseDate	2016-02-16
Format	Kindle eBook

Elephant Complex: Travels in Sri Lanka

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