Non-fiction English in Sri Lanka

“Sindbad in Serendib” is one of those ‘must have’ books on the shelf even if you are not a collector of books on Sri Lanka. This is a collection of articles published in the newspapers over the years by Richard Boyle. It is very scholarly in approach but I never found it dry or boring.

Apart from the aforementioned Sindbad, articles cover, in exhaustive detail, the pearl fisheries of Ceylon, the :anaconda of Ceylon,” Galle in its heyday, the Nittaewo, a pigmy-sized aboriginal group of people said to have existed in ancient times, the archaeological site of Ritigala, Zoologist and artist Ernst Haeckel, and psychologist Carl G. Jung’s visit to Sri Lanka. Rich in anecdote and evidently the product of years of painstaking research, this is one book I’m really proud to have in my collection!

It is beautifully printed and contains many splendid illustrations, including the work of Gustav Dore, archaeologists  P. E. P. Deraniyagala and H. C. P. Bell, Ernst Haeckel, and others.