The Village in the Jungle

This novel set in Ceylon follows the lives of a handful of villagers hacking out a fragile existence in a jungle where indiscriminate growth, indifferent fate and malevolent neighbours constantly threaten to overwhelm them.

Translated into both Tamil and Sinhalese, it is one of the best-loved and best-known stories in Sri Lanka. This book reeks of first-hand knowledge of the colonial experience, and of its profound, malign disregard for the psychology and culture of its subject peoples.

It is as if Thomas Hardy were immersed in the heat, scent, sensuality and pungent mystery of the tropics. Seven years as a colonial administrator gave Woolf first-hand knowledge of the injustice of colonial rule, and an acute psychological sympathy with the villagers. He skilfully incorporates local story-telling traditions and beliefs into his chilling narrative, to create a book which remains one of the best-loved in Sri Lanka to this day.