John Gimlette

Sri Lanka is a small island with a long, violent and enthralling history. Home to thousands of wild elephants, this is a place where natural beauty has endured, indifferent to human tragedy.

Journeying through its many regions - some haunted by war, many rarely seen byour eyes - award-winning travel writer John Gimlette interviews ex-presidents and cricketers, tea planters and terrorists, negotiating the complex relationships of Sinhalese, Tamil and Muslim communities and the more sinister forms of tourism.

Each city raises the ghosts of old colonies:Portuguese, Dutch and British armies striving to claim the most significant ports in the country. The political families of Colombo lead Gimlette through recent years of turmoil, survivors of the tsunami tell of their recovery and, tale by tale, scrap by scrap, the thorny truths of the civil war emerge - a war whose wounds have yet to heal.

John Gimlette is a travel writerwho has won the prestigious Shiva Naipaul Prize for travel writing in 1997. His books have featured on BBC Radio 4 and he has a keen eye for the absurd. He also practices as a barrister.