As I plunged into this book, they began flowing around me, but soon they came faster, and finally they whooshed past me like bright fish in a rapids, darting and weaving: my impressions of Sri Lanka, garnered a decade ago during a too-brief excursion. In Woolf in Ceylon: An Imperial Journey in the Shadow of Leonard Woolf, 1904–1911, author Christopher Ondaatje writes of travelling south along the west coast of that island state from Colombo to Galle, and I remember driving the same route, looking out at the fishers on stilts in the Indian Ocean, and up at the toddy-tappers dancing on ropes strung between palm trees, so marvellous we stopped to sample the toddy that would later be distilled into harsh-tasting arrack.
Ondaatje writes of travelling between Colombo, the bustling capital city, and Kandy town, the beating Buddha-heart of the island, situated 115 kilometres inland, and I remember riding an...
Ken McGoogan, who has written extensively on the fur trade and Arctic exploration, recently published Celtic Lightning: How the Scots and the Irish Created a Canadian Nation.
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