Hot new reads for the beach.

Sri Lanka uses child fighters.
‘ Air attacks kill 16 civilians’ claim Tigers.
Sri Lanka minister in blast.
Familiar headlines we ignore daily on the ongoing and escalating fighting in Sri Lanka.

Would these alternatives encourage you to read on?
2006 Man Booker Prize winner, Kiran Desai absconds to tropical paradise with travel writer William Dalrymple.
Writers flock to Sri Lankan World Heritage Site to celebrate life and love.

And if you did, you’d discover that Sri Lanka is more than a series of doleful statistics. As Mark Twain said, “it is beautiful!” and yes, it is “most sumptuously tropical.”

I know this first hand, as I lived on the outskirts of Colombo with my family for the year 2002- 2003. Today my Colombo-based friend Sue sent me an e-mail about her plans for next week – big surprise, attending a literary festival based in the southern town of Galle.
Just two years ago Galle was hit horribly hard by the Tsunami, but even as reconstruction continues and the civil war escalates, Sri Lankans are trying to make life there worth living. Starting on 10th January, Kiran Desai, Mark Tully, Madhur Jaffrey, Victoria Glendinning and my favourite, William Dalrymple, join with many other writers internationally known as well as local, to put Sri Lanka on the map for all the right reasons.

Sri Lanka’s not all bad news.