Historical fiction books from Sri Lanka
Recommended historical fiction books (19)
Travel the world without leaving your chair.
If you are into historical fiction here are some historical fiction books from Sri Lanka for the next part of the Read Around The World Challenge.
1.
A Passage North by Anuk Arudpragasam EN
Description:
SHORTLISTED FOR THE BOOKER PRIZE 2021 It begins with a message: a telephone call informing Krishan that his grandmother''s former care-giver, Rani, has died in unexpected circumstances, at the bottom of a well in her village in the north, her neck broken by the fall. The news arrives on the heels of an email from Anjum, an activist he fell in love with four years earlier while living in Delhi, bringing with it the stirring of distant memories and desires. As Krishan makes the long journey by train from Colombo into the war-torn Northern Province for the funeral, so begins a passage into the so... continue
2.
Anil's Ghost by Michael Ondaatje EN
Description:
With his first novel since the internationally acclaimed The English Patient, Booker Prize—winning author Michael Ondaatje gives us a work displaying all the richness of imagery and language and the piercing emotional truth that we have come to know as the hallmarks of his writing. Anil’s Ghost transports us to Sri Lanka, a country steeped in centuries of tradition, now forced into the late twentieth century by the ravages of civil war. Into this maelstrom steps Anil Tissera, a young woman born in Sri Lanka, educated in England and America, who returns to her homeland as a forensic anthropolog... continue
3.
Brotherless Night by V. V. Ganeshananthan EN
Description:
New York Times Book Review Editors’ Choice • A courageous young Sri Lankan woman tries to protect her dream of becoming a doctor in this “heartbreaking exploration of a family fractured by civil war” (Brit Bennett, #1 New York Times bestselling author of The Vanishing Half). “This book, a careful, vivid exploration of what’s lost within a community when life and thought collapse toward binary conflict, rang softly for me as a novel for our own country in this odd time.”—Nathan Heller, The New Yorker AN NPR BEST BOOK OF THE YEAR • WINNER OF THE CAROL SHIELDS PRIZE FOR FICTION, THE WOMEN’S PRIZE... continue
4.
Cinnamon Gardens by Shyam Selvadurai EN
Description:
Selvadurai has captured horrifyingly well the airlessness of a society in which only a few are truly able to breathe, and deeply' Mary Loudon, The Times In Shyam Selvadurai's masterful second novel, set in repressive and complex 1920s Ceylon, the Cinnamon Gardens is a residential enclave of wealthy Ceylonese. Among them is Annalukshmi, an independent and high-spirited young teacher intent on thwarting her parents' plans to arrange her marriage. In a parallel narrative, her uncle, Balendran Navaratnam, respectably married but secretly homosexual, has his life disrupted by the arrival in Ceylon ... continue
5.
Coming Through Slaughter by Michael Ondaatje EN
Description:
Bringing to life the fabulous, colorful panorama of New Orleans in the first flush of the jazz era, this book tells the story of Buddy Bolden, the first of the great trumpet players--some say the originator of jazz--who was, in any case, the genius, the guiding spirit, and the king of that time and place. In this fictionalized meditation, Bolden, an unrecorded father of Jazz, remains throughout a tantalizingly ungraspable phantom, the central mysteries of his life, his art, and his madness remaining felt but never quite pinned down. Ondaatje's prose is at times startlingly lyrical, and as he c... continue
6.
Der englische Patient : Roman by Michael Ondaatje DE
Description:
Der Zufall verschlägt 4 Menschen unterschiedlichster Herkunft gegen Ende des 2. Weltkrieges in eine zerbomte Villa in der Toskana und verbindet sie zu einer Notgemeinschaft
7.
Edwin : High King of Britain by Edoardo Albert EN
Description:
A vivid recreation of the rise of the Christian kings of Northumbria
8.
El Paciente Ingles by Michael Ondaatje ES
Description:
With ravishing beauty and unsettling intelligence, Michael Ondaatje's Booker Prize-winning novel traces the intersection of four damaged lives in an Italian villa at the end of World War II. Each is haunted by the riddle of the fourth member, an English patient -- a nameless, burned man whose memories of passion, betrayal, and rescue illuminates this book like flashes of heat lightening.
9.
Funny Boy : A Novel by Shyam Selvadurai EN
Description:
A coming of age story about Arjun Chelvaratnam, who struggles with his homosexuality, entering into an affair with a schoolmate and breaking not only sexual taboos, but also social structures that separate the Tamil and Sinhalese.
10.
On Sal Mal Lane : A Novel by Ru Freeman EN
Description:
In the tradition of In the Time of the Butterflies and The Kite Runner, a tender, evocative novel about the years leading up to the Sri Lankan civil war * A Library Journal Best Indie Fiction of 2013 * A Largehearted Boy Best Book of the Year * On the day the Herath family moves in, Sal Mal Lane is still a quiet street, disturbed only by the cries of the children whose triumphs and tragedies sustain the families that live there. As the neighbors adapt to the newcomers in different ways, the children fill their days with cricket matches, romantic crushes, and small rivalries. But the tremors of... continue