Since the early fourteenth century, travelers have journeyed to the resplendent island of Sri Lankaonce known as Ceylonbelieving it to be just short of paradise. In 2001, centuries after the arrivals and departures of Dutch admirals, Portuguese soldiers, Arab traders, and British tea planters, Adele Barker and her son Noah came from Tucson, Arizona, to the island. Settling into its verdant central highlands, they would spend the next year immersing themselves in the customs, cultures, and landscapes of Sri Lankaits elephants, birds, and monkeys; its hot curries and sweet mangoes; the cacophony of its markets; the resonant evening chants from its temples. They would also encounter there a world infused with the religious traditions of Buddhism, Hinduism, Islam, and missionary Christianityand with the troubled history of sectarian violence that had culminated in a twenty-five-year civil war.Combining the immediacy of memoir and the vividness of travelogue with the insight of the best reportage,Not Quite Paradisechronicles life on the island in all its complexity. Barker conveys the quality of everyday experienceat once lyrical and profoundly discordant. A professor at the University of Peradeniya, she daily crosses a campus lush with greenery and reverberating with birdsong, discovering that only decades before, its swollen rivers had carried the bodies of students killed in the insurrections. Her narrative moves deftly from personal detailspeople she befriends, the cohabiting insects, the marauding monkeys that steal her TV antenna, the elephants lumbering through traffic to eyewitness accounts of the devastation wrought by the war between the Sinhalese government and the Tamil Tigers.When, having returned to Tucson after her sojourn in Sri Lanka, Barker awakes on December 26, 2004, to see televised images of the island's southern shore disappearing into the ocean, she decides she must go back. Traveling from the southernmost coasts to the farthest outposts of the Tamil north, she witnesses the ravages of the tsunami that killed forty-eight thousand Sri Lankans in the space of twenty minutes, and reports from the ground on the triumphs and failures of relief efforts. Barker speaks with survivors in temporary camps and seeks out people she had known years before, only to discover that some of them were lost forever on "the day the sea came to the land."Missing neither the nuances of the peaceful Buddhist pace of life nor the explosive violence of civil war, Barker offers an eye-opening account of the "pearl" of the Indian Ocean, inviting American readers to experience firsthand the vivid beauty and turmoil of a place few have ever visited.

Adele Barker, who was awarded a Ucross Fellowship for her work on this book, has taught at the universities of Arizona and Washington. She is the author and editor of five books on Russian literature and cultural life. Most recently, she received a Fulbright Senior Scholar grant to teach and write in Sri Lanka.


Going and Coming I	p. 3
Student Life	p. 9
Housekeeping	p. 15
Insurrections in the Hills	p. 33
Hot Curry	p. 51
Rain	p. 57
The War Next Door	p. 71
Colombo	p. 93
Colonialist Torpor	p. 103
Life in a Different Key	p. 125
Gihin Ennam	p. 135

When the Sea Came to the Land	p. 147
Home	p. 163
Up and Down the Mountain	p. 173
The Story of a Wave	p. 181
Early Warning System	p. 197
Arugam Bay	p. 207
Batti	p. 217
The Road to Jaffna	p. 231
In Jaffna	p. 245
Reading the Classics	p. 263
Leaving Jaffna	p. 273
Going and Coming II	p. 285
Epilogue	p. 297
Table of Contents provided by Ingram. All Rights Reserved.

Supplemental Materials

What is included with this book?

The New copy of this book will include any supplemental materials advertised. Please check the title of the book to determine if it should include any access cards, study guides, lab manuals, CDs, etc.

The Used, Rental and eBook copies of this book are not guaranteed to include any supplemental materials. Typically, only the book itself is included. This is true even if the title states it includes any access cards, study guides, lab manuals, CDs, etc.

Amazon no longer offers textbook rentals. We do!

Amazon no longer offers textbook rentals. We do!

We're the #1 textbook rental company. Let us show you why.

Not Quite Paradise An American Sojourn in Sri Lanka

9780807000618

0807000612

Supplemental Materials

Summary

Author Biography

Table of Contents

Supplemental Materials

Rewards Program