Vasantha retired early, bought himself a van with his savings and now works as a driver for hire in Sri Lanka. As he ferries new entrepreneurs, charity workers and families around the country, he reveals with self-deprecating wit and folksy wisdom their uncertain lives after the end of a decades-long war. On his journey from the army camps of the north to the moonlit beaches of the south coast, he begins to wonder if the past can be left behind— especially his own, and his country’s—and what the future might hold for a lovelorn soldier out on the ramparts, a fast-moving hotelier in a bombed out town, an eager Jaffna student of Italian, or a desperate librarian of empty shelves? Perceptive, somber, finely tuned, Noontide Toll draws an extraordinary portrait of post-war Sri Lanka grappling with the ghosts of its troubled past.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR Romesh Gunesekera
Sunny is Sri Lankan and nearly fifteen years old. It is the late sixties, and his father has moved the two of them to Manila, after his mother's death. Sunny decides to start a cricket team with the other Sri Lankans to get the attention of his attractive neighbour. But even when first love goes wrong, his passion for cricket remains, the only connection he has to the home he left behind. Sunny goes on to attend university in London, and when his father dies, he finds himself unable to return to the Philippines. He falls in love, and makes a new life for himself in England. But despite the obvious tranquillity of his life, he feels unmoored, increasingly distanced from his lovely wife and especially from their son, who doesn't share his interest in cricket. From the acclaimed author of "Reef" and "Heaven's Edge", "The Match" is a heart-warming, funny family saga, stretching from the seventies to the present-day and moving from Asia to Europe. It is a story about fathers and sons, of finding home and coming home, of cricket, growing up and falling in love.
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