Empire Island

There has always been a dispute about Empire, no matter where or when, no less with respect to the country that is now called Sri Lanka. Action and character interplay in this novel of intrigue and adventure set in the Ceylon of 1819. The main personalities in this society of Buddhists, Hindus and Christians, were struggling to get to grips with the contradictions of Empire. A bloody rebellion in 1817-18 had nearly thwarted the British attempt to sweep away the old Buddhist Kingdom of Kandy and transform the entire island into a Crown Colony under King George III. All the characters, no matter what their origin and beliefs, are working through the consequences of this disastrous conflict. Nishantha, a pupil of the Kandyan monasteries, attempts to stop his father, a soldier and nobleman of the old kingdom, from stirring up a new rebellion designed to place a Thai Buddhist price on the throne. Sundari has lived on the coast under Dutch and then British rule. Twice widowed and with grownup children, she finds herself at nearly 60 a free woman. She sets out to discover the ravaged interior of her country. Clifford Armytage, a new British administrator, finds himself drawn deeply into the Kandyan world. The story opens with young Lieutenant Tom Sheridan of the frigate ‘HMS Sealord’ on the way from his birthplace, Madras, to Ceylon, unsure what he will discover there.

A principal theme of the novel is the formation of friendships across the cultural and racial divide. The binding factor is doubt over the objectives of Empire and the violence at the heart of it. Virtually all the characters in this novel are fictitious. We are concerned here with what these individuals think and how they react both to events and to one another.