Gamini Seneviratne, reviewing Christopher Ondaatje: Woolf in Ceylon. An Imperial Journey in the Shadow of Leonard Woolf-1904-1911 (2006)
This book runs to over 300 pages – room enough for Christopher Ondaatje to touch on virtually every aspect of Leonard Woolf’s life and work. It would of course be possible to pursue each of them towards a clearer understanding of both (author and subject). In a review of this kind, though, a consideration of what appears to be the author’s view of what Woolf experienced here and in England must suffice. Note that Ondaatje’s account is embellished by many photographs, some of them truly excellent. Some have been drawn from the archives of the Royal Geographical Society and the University of Sussex, many are of Ondaatje’s own making.
The author has been to a great deal of trouble researching the people and places mentioned by Woolf in his writings on / from Ceylon: ‘The Village in the Jungle’, ‘Stories from the East’, his letters and ‘Growing’ the segment of his autobiography that covers his stay here in the early 1900s, and his official Diaries as Assistant Government Agent, Hambantota. Ondaatje’s writing is lively and lucid, perhaps less so here than in ‘The Man-eater of Punani’. A selection of the photographs in both books merits publication in a separate portfolio.
