`. . . one must be grateful for this volume, with its sense of the beauty and transience of human existence, with its piquant flashes of humour and above all, with its blazing vividness of style.'


FRANCIS KING. Spectator
              

Less than a quarter of a mile from our house, the red road met the tarred road that led to Colombo, twelve miles away. But where we lived a stranger rarely passed by, and a motor car was a nine days' wonder. Not that it was what you call a lonely road, or a quiet one; oh no, the red dust swirled upwards in the luminous daylight, disturbed by many pairs of feet, and at dusk, the blackness was loud and vibrant . . .

from `The Red Road and the River'


Childhood in Ceylon is vividly portrayed in a sequence of stories and vignettes which evoke the exotic beauty of the author's birthplace, the secretive pleasures of his boyhood there, and the poignance of a Buddhism riveted on ephemerality. The lyricism of the writing and a large cast of characters make this book a delight. It portrays an exceptional individual, a gifted imagination growing up in one culture and gradually being possessed by another.