Island republic off South India; independent from Britain in 1948 (as Ceylon), became a republic in 1972.
De Silva's revised single-volume history is the standard scholarly account of the island from antiquity to the present.
Modern political and social history covering independence through the civil war era.
Novel set during Sri Lanka's late-20th-century civil-war era, examining its human-rights crisis; the most acclaimed contemporary Sri Lankan-set novel by a Sri Lankan-born author (dropping his memoir 'Running in the Family', which is nonfiction).