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Kala Korner - by Dee Cee

'Woolf in Ceylon' here for Book Fair
The year's big event - the International Book Fair - is just round the corner. It opens on September 10 at the BMICH. It is customary for publishers to release new titles and new editions at the fair and among the specials this year will be 'Woolf in Ceylon' described as 'An Imperial Journey in the Shadow of Leonard Woolf 1904-1911' by Christopher Ondaatje. The book marks a hundred years since Woolf first came here as a cadet in the Ceylon Civil Service. Sri Lankan born Ondaatje, now domiciled in England, revisited Sri Lanka and followed Woolf's trail to see for himself the present condition of the places Woolf described in his diaries, letters and particularly in 'Growing', his autobiography. 'Woolf in Ceylon' is the result of that visit.

In mid-December 1904 when Woolf arrived by boat he described Colombo as "a real eastern city, swarming with human beings and flies, the streets full of flitting rickshaws and creaking bullock carts, hot and heavy with the complicated smells of men and beasts and dung and oil and food and fruit and spice”.These were the days before the motor-car. To Ondaatje, today Colombo is "a turmoil of cars criss-crossing, horns honking, motorbikes weaving, people shouting and children begging”.

Ondaatje is sad that Woolf didn't write much about Anuradhapura, "the greatest city of the empire and its remains still display ruins to match the pyramids of Egypt and beauty to equal the delicacy of Athens”.

Woolf saw the Jaffna Peninsula as different to any other part of the island. "It is inhabited by Tamils, who are Hindus and generally darker and dourer than the Sinhalese. The Tamil crowd swarming on the station platforms, in the villages or in the Jaffna streets has a look and air of its own, much less animated (unless it is angry) and less gay than the Sinhalese in Colombo or Kandy or the Southern Province."

“Today, Jaffna is a different place," Ondaatje writes. "It is quiet; there is still none of the hustle and bustle of a busy eastern town. There are cars and trucks on the road again and many of the 75,000 people who fled the chaos before 1983 have returned to the foothills. There is a tenuous peace, but the scars of the brutal civil war still show on many of the houses. The 100 camps that once housed nearly 200,000 refugees are no more; but 11 refugee camps near Vavuniya, southeast of Jaffna, still exhibit the pitiful plight of the homeless."

Overwhelming response
The fair is an event eagerly looked forward to by the public. Massive crowds turn up with most of them investing in new publications. The publishers offer attractive discounts. Visidunu, for example, will be giving a 30% discount on at least 52 of their publications.

A record 394 stalls will be on dispaly this year. There will be around 150 exhibitors.

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