Emeritus Professor of Anthropology at Princeton University, Gananath Obeyesekere completed a B.A. in English (1955) at the University of Ceylon, Peradeniya, followed by an M.A. (1958) and Ph.D (1964) at the University of Washington. Obeyesekere held teaching positions at the University of Ceylon, the University of Washington, the University of California, San Diego and has done much work in his home country of Sri Lanka.

A requiem for Sri Vikrama Rajasinha

On 24 Jan 1816, the captured king of Kandy was escorted on board the Cornwallis together with his queens, relatives and servants. Almost a month later, King Sri Vikrama Rajasinha arrives at the Vellore Fort in India, to spend his remaining days in exile. Thus ends the tragic tale of the Doomed King of Lanka.

Using Kadaimpot, vittipot and documents from English servicemen, Gananath Obeysekere reveals a portrait of a king who was much maligned and betrayed by those he trusted. The Doomed King makes for fascinating reading where a master spy, a Machiavellian governor and an opportunistic nobleman together, bring about the fall of the Kandyan Kingdom.

'This book confirms that Obeysekere, probably the most distinguished living anthropologist, remains at the peak of his prodigious scholarly powers.' - Rajeev Bhargava, Professor, CSDS, Delhi

'Essential reading, not only for its accounts of colonial rule in Kandy, but also for providing an example of the long-lasting persistence of historical knowledge that was constructed to justify imperial expansion.' - John Rogers, American Inst of Sri Lankan Studies

Shehan Karunatilaka is the award- winning author of Chinaman: The Legend of Pradeep Mathew. He is the father of two children and the author of four books.

Lalith Karunatilaka is a younger brother, ad-man and lapsed architect. He is the father of two naughty doggies and mother of none.

Baby Baba is still learning where to poop. So he poops everywhere except where he should. He's also learning about the pooping habits of pandas, vultures, sloths, beetles, and even mites. Maybe they can teach him that the potty is his friend.

Cheeky, educational, and fun, Where Shall I Poop? is a rhyming book for toddlers. New from the creators of Please Don't Put That In Your Mouth, it is the perfect potty training companion.

Illustrated by Lalith Karunatilaka 

Brand New Re-release by TAMBAPANNI ACADEMIC PUBLISHERS

For hundreds of years, the island of Sri Lanka was a crucial stopover for people and goods in the Indian Ocean. For the Dutch East India Company, it was also a crossroads in the Indian Ocean slave trade. Slavery was present in multiple forms in Sri Lanka—then Ceylon—when the British conquered the island in the late eighteenth century and began to gradually abolish slavery. Yet the continued presence of enslaved people in Sri Lanka in the nineteenth century has practically vanished from collective memory in both the Sinhalese and Tamil communities.

Nira Wickramasinghe uncovers the traces of slavery in the history and memory of the Indian Ocean world, exploring moments of revolt in the lives of enslaved people in the wake of abolition. She tells the stories of Wayreven, the slave who traveled in the palanquin of his master; Selestina, accused of killing her child; Rawothan, who sought permission for his son to be circumcised; and others, enslaved or emancipated, who challenged their status. Drawing on legal cases, petitions, and other colonial records to recover individual voices and quotidian moments, Wickramasinghe offers a meditation on the archive of slavery. She examines how color-based racial thinking gave way to more nuanced debates about identity, complicating conceptions of blackness and racialization. A deeply interdisciplinary book with a focus on recovering subaltern resistance, Slave in a Palanquin offers a vital new portrait of the local and transnational worlds of the colonial-era Asian slave trade in the Indian Ocean. 

"A compellingly important work by one of Sri Lanka's best historians. Slave in a Palanquin challenges narratives of purity and authenticity on an island where murmurings about descent are far too common but where memories of enslavement have been erased. By turning to forgotten records and traces, Wickramasinghe insists on the subaltern, the resistant, and the particular. As the book proceeds, Sri Lanka moves into the centre of key debates in world history about labour, memory, freedom and power" ~ Sujit Sivasundaram, author of Islanded: Britain, Sri Lanka, and the Bounds of an Indian Ocean Colony

Channa Wickremesekera is a Sri Lankan born writer living in Australia. This is his fifth work of fiction.

An examination of the challenges face by Sri Lanka's military forces during the first phase of the conflict with the LTTE.

Starting with the first deployment of the army in Jaffna in 1979, the book follows the army on to its first major military operation in May 1987.
The military's response demonstrated their inadequate training as well as their politcal masters' skewed perception of the conflict, frequently leading to disastrous outcomes. But it was also a period of learning. Despite many bloody setbacks and failures the armed forces gradually learned the rudiments of fighting a guerilla enemy, the culmination of this apprenticeship being the launching of 'Operation Liberation', the first brigade-strength operation carried out by the Sri Lankan army.