We look forward to seeing you on your next visit to the library. Find a location near you.

Elephant Complex: Travels in Sri Lanka
(Adobe EPUB eBook, Kindle Book, OverDrive Read)

Book Cover
Average Rating
5 star
 
(0)
4 star
 
(0)
3 star
 
(0)
2 star
 
(0)
1 star
 
(1)
Published:
Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group 2016
Status:
Available from OverDrive
Description
No one sees the world quite like John Gimlette. As The New York Times once noted, “he writes with enormous wit, indignation, and a heightened sense of the absurd.” Writing for both the adventurer and the armchair traveler, he has an eye for unusually telling detail, a sense of wonder, and compelling curiosity for the inside story. This time, he travels to Sri Lanka, a country only now emerging from twenty-six years of civil war. Delving deep into the nation’s story, Gimlette provides us with an astonishing, multifaceted portrait of the island today.
His travels reveal the country as never before. Beginning in the exuberant capital, Colombo (“a hint of anarchy everywhere”), he ventures out in all directions: to the dry zones where the island’s 5,800 wild elephants congregate around ancient reservoirs; through cinnamon country with its Portuguese forts; to the “Bible Belt” of Buddhism—the tsunami-ravaged southeast coast; then up into the great green highlands (“the garden in the sky”) and Kandy, the country’s eccentric, aristocratic Shangri-la. Along the way, a wild and often desperate history takes shape, a tale of great colonies (Arab, Portuguese, British, and Dutch) and of the cultural divisions that still divide this society. Before long, we’re in Jaffna and the Vanni, crucibles of the recent conflict. These areas—the hottest, driest, and least hospitable—have been utterly devastated by war and are only now struggling to their feet.
But this is also a story of friendship and remarkable encounters. In the course of his journey, Gimlette meets farmers, war heroes, ancient tribesmen, world-class cricketers, terrorists, a former president, old planters, survivors of great massacres—and perhaps some of their perpetrators. That’s to say nothing of the island’s beguiling fauna: elephants, crocodiles, snakes, storks, and the greatest concentration of leopards on Earth.
           
Here is a land of extravagant beauty and profound devastation, of ingenuity and catastrophe, possessed of both a volatile past and an uncertain future—a place capable of being at once heavenly and hellish—all brought to vibrant, fascinating life here on the page.
Also in This Series
Formats
Adobe EPUB eBook
Works on all eReaders (except Kindles), desktop computers and mobile devices with reading apps installed.
Kindle Book
Works on Kindles and devices with a Kindle app installed.
OverDrive Read
Need Help?
If you are having problem transferring a title to your device, please fill out this support form or visit the library so we can help you to use our eBooks and eAudio Books.
More Like This
Other Editions and Formats
More Copies In LINK+
Loading LINK+ Copies...
More Details
Format:
Adobe EPUB eBook, Kindle Book, OverDrive Read
Street Date:
02/16/2016
Language:
English
ISBN:
9780385351287
ASIN:
B00XSSMKS6
Reviews from GoodReads
Loading GoodReads Reviews.
Citations
APA Citation (style guide)

John Gimlette. (2016). Elephant Complex: Travels in Sri Lanka. Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group.

Chicago / Turabian - Author Date Citation (style guide)

John Gimlette. 2016. Elephant Complex: Travels in Sri Lanka. Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group.

Chicago / Turabian - Humanities Citation (style guide)

John Gimlette, Elephant Complex: Travels in Sri Lanka. Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group, 2016.

MLA Citation (style guide)

John Gimlette. Elephant Complex: Travels in Sri Lanka. Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group, 2016.

Note! Citation formats are based on standards as of July 2022. Citations contain only title, author, edition, publisher, and year published. Citations should be used as a guideline and should be double checked for accuracy.
Copy Details
LibraryOwnedAvailable
Shared Digital Collection11
Staff View
Grouped Work ID:
392057c6-d12b-2574-5090-18e44b540a0b
Go To Grouped Work
Needs Update?:
No
Date Added:
Jun 12, 2018 15:35:57
Date Updated:
Dec 06, 2020 02:41:13
Last Metadata Check:
Mar 24, 2024 06:54:05
Last Metadata Change:
Sep 30, 2023 11:21:00
Last Availability Check:
Mar 24, 2024 06:54:08
Last Availability Change:
Nov 29, 2022 09:43:43
Last Grouped Work Modification Time:
Mar 28, 2024 02:11:39

OverDrive Product Record

images
    • cover:
        • href: https://img1.od-cdn.com/ImageType-100/0111-1/{C7A91ADD-E6F3-42A5-98B1-438229DD06E9}Img100.jpg
        • type: image/jpeg
    • thumbnail:
        • href: https://img1.od-cdn.com/ImageType-200/0111-1/{C7A91ADD-E6F3-42A5-98B1-438229DD06E9}Img200.jpg
        • type: image/jpeg
    • cover150Wide:
        • href: https://img1.od-cdn.com/ImageType-150/0111-1/C7A/91A/DD/{C7A91ADD-E6F3-42A5-98B1-438229DD06E9}Img150.jpg
        • type: image/jpeg
    • cover300Wide:
        • href: https://img1.od-cdn.com/ImageType-400/0111-1/C7A/91A/DD/{C7A91ADD-E6F3-42A5-98B1-438229DD06E9}Img400.jpg
        • type: image/jpeg
formats
      • identifiers:
            • type: ISBN
            • value: 9780385351287
            • type: PublisherCatalogNumber
            • value: 231522
      • name: Adobe EPUB eBook
      • id: ebook-epub-adobe
      • identifiers:
            • type: ASIN
            • value: B00XSSMKS6
            • type: PublisherCatalogNumber
            • value: 231522
      • name: Kindle Book
      • id: ebook-kindle
      • identifiers:
            • type: ISBN
            • value: 9780385351287
            • type: PublisherCatalogNumber
            • value: 231522
      • name: OverDrive Read
      • id: ebook-overdrive
mediaType
eBook
primaryCreator
    • role: Author
    • name: John Gimlette
title
Elephant Complex
dateAdded
2016-12-15T18:42:00-05:00
contentDetails
      • href: https://link.overdrive.com/?websiteID=141&titleID=2356229
      • type: text/html
      • account:
          • name: Sacramento Public Library (CA)
          • id: 1151
sortTitle
Elephant Complex Travels in Sri Lanka
crossRefId
2356229
subtitle
Travels in Sri Lanka
id
c7a91add-e6f3-42a5-98b1-438229dd06e9
starRating
4.5

OverDrive MetaData

isPublicDomain
False
formats
      • fileName: ElephantComplex_9780385351287_2356229
      • partCount: 0
      • fileSize: 54341229
      • identifiers:
            • type: ISBN
            • value: 9780385351287
            • type: PublisherCatalogNumber
            • value: 231522
      • rights:
            • type: Copying
            • value: 0
            • type: Printing
            • value: 0
            • type: Lending
            • value: 0
            • type: ReadAloud
            • value: 0
            • type: ExpirationRights
            • value: 0
      • name: Adobe EPUB eBook
      • isReadAlong: False
      • id: ebook-epub-adobe
      • onSaleDate: 2/16/2016
      • samples:
            • source: From the book
            • formatType: ebook-overdrive
            • url: https://samples.overdrive.com/?crid=c7a91add-e6f3-42a5-98b1-438229dd06e9&.epub-sample.overdrive.com
      • fileName: ElephantComplex_2356229
      • partCount: 0
      • fileSize: 0
      • identifiers:
            • type: PublisherCatalogNumber
            • value: 231522
            • type: ASIN
            • value: B00XSSMKS6
      • name: Kindle Book
      • isReadAlong: False
      • id: ebook-kindle
      • onSaleDate: 2/16/2016
      • samples:
            • source: From the book
            • formatType: ebook-overdrive
            • url: https://samples.overdrive.com/?crid=c7a91add-e6f3-42a5-98b1-438229dd06e9&.epub-sample.overdrive.com
      • fileName: ElephantComplex_9780385351287_2356229
      • partCount: 0
      • fileSize: 53520742
      • identifiers:
            • type: ISBN
            • value: 9780385351287
            • type: PublisherCatalogNumber
            • value: 231522
      • name: OverDrive Read
      • isReadAlong: False
      • id: ebook-overdrive
      • onSaleDate: 2/16/2016
      • samples:
            • source: From the book
            • formatType: ebook-overdrive
            • url: https://samples.overdrive.com/?crid=c7a91add-e6f3-42a5-98b1-438229dd06e9&.epub-sample.overdrive.com
keywords
      • value: Asia
      • value: Travelogues
      • value: road trip
      • value: liberation
      • value: Asian history
      • value: Colombo
      • value: Ceylon
      • value: travel memoir
      • value: Silk Road
      • value: culture
      • value: Anarchy
      • value: travelogue
      • value: Sri Lanka
      • value: World History
      • value: Asian
      • value: complex
      • value: geography
      • value: Travels
      • value: Travel
      • value: Elephant
      • value: Asian art
      • value: tea
      • value: History
      • value: Essays
      • value: government
      • value: Travel writing
      • value: Portugal
      • value: Buddhism
      • value: Tamil Tigers
      • value: travel books
      • value: travel book
      • value: history of Asia
      • value: Kandy
      • value: gifts for history buffs
      • value: travel diary
      • value: travel gifts
      • value: traveling books
      • value: travel gift
      • value: traveling gifts
      • value: road trip essentials
      • value: mom gifts from daughter
      • value: travelogue books
      • value: asian history books
creators
      • role: Author
      • fileAs: Gimlette, John
      • bioText: JOHN GIMLETTE has won the Shiva Naipaul Memorial Prize and the Wanderlust Travel Writing Award, and he contributes regularly to The Times (London), The Guardian, The Telegraph, The Independent, and Condé Nast Traveller. When not traveling, he practices law in London.
      • name: John Gimlette
imprint
Vintage
publishDate
2016-02-16T00:00:00-05:00
isOwnedByCollections
True
title
Elephant Complex
fullDescription
No one sees the world quite like John Gimlette. As The New York Times once noted, “he writes with enormous wit, indignation, and a heightened sense of the absurd.” Writing for both the adventurer and the armchair traveler, he has an eye for unusually telling detail, a sense of wonder, and compelling curiosity for the inside story. This time, he travels to Sri Lanka, a country only now emerging from twenty-six years of civil war. Delving deep into the nation’s story, Gimlette provides us with an astonishing, multifaceted portrait of the island today.
His travels reveal the country as never before. Beginning in the exuberant capital, Colombo (“a hint of anarchy everywhere”), he ventures out in all directions: to the dry zones where the island’s 5,800 wild elephants congregate around ancient reservoirs; through cinnamon country with its Portuguese forts; to the “Bible Belt” of Buddhism—the tsunami-ravaged southeast coast; then up into the great green highlands (“the garden in the sky”) and Kandy, the country’s eccentric, aristocratic Shangri-la. Along the way, a wild and often desperate history takes shape, a tale of great colonies (Arab, Portuguese, British, and Dutch) and of the cultural divisions that still divide this society. Before long, we’re in Jaffna and the Vanni, crucibles of the recent conflict. These areas—the hottest, driest, and least hospitable—have been utterly devastated by war and are only now struggling to their feet.
But this is also a story of friendship and remarkable encounters. In the course of his journey, Gimlette meets farmers, war heroes, ancient tribesmen, world-class cricketers, terrorists, a former president, old planters, survivors of great massacres—and perhaps some of their perpetrators. That’s to say nothing of the island’s beguiling fauna: elephants, crocodiles, snakes, storks, and the greatest concentration of leopards on Earth.
           
Here is a land of extravagant beauty and profound devastation, of ingenuity and catastrophe, possessed of both a volatile past and an uncertain future—a place capable of being at once heavenly and hellish—all brought to vibrant, fascinating life here on the page.
reviews
      • premium: False
      • source: The New York Times Book Review
      • content: "A gorgeously vivid depiction of one of the last untamed places on the planet . . . Guaranteed to arouse the adventurous reader's wanderlust."
      • premium: False
      • source: Michiko Kakutani, The New York Times
      • content: "John Gimlette's account is so rich in anecdotes, so suffused in color and dialect and detail that we are left with a sense of having somehow inhaled all this Paraguayan history and then experienced it through a nightmare or a dream. He has given us a cast of characters as vivid as any by Dickens or Waugh."
      • premium: False
      • source: The Boston Globe
      • content: "A hilarious, informed anti-travelogue [with] bite and style."
      • premium: False
      • source: The Seattle Times
      • content: "You couldn't ask for a more entertaining guide . . . For all his mastery of Paraguayan history, it's Gimlette's extravagant prose and unhinged enthusiasm that make the book."
      • premium: True
      • source: Publisher's Weekly
      • content:

        December 21, 2015
        Sri Lanka, the seemingly paradisiacal island at the tip of the Indian subcontinent, has a troubling, obscured past that’s slowly revealed in this vivid travelogue. Gimlette (Wild Coast) takes in the colorful polyglot metropolis of Colombo, lunching with slum-dwellers and chatting with a former president. He visits ancient ruins and reservoirs as well as modern ruins from the 2004 tsunami; meets farmers who live in trees to evade marauding elephants; chats with boy prostitutes in the island’s sex tourism mecca; and strolls the old forts of European colonialists, who left behind townlets that look like Dutch watercolors. Gimlette’s writing is in fine form, featuring his usual gorgeous evocations of landscapes, sharp-eyed thumbnails of characters and eccentrics, and an endless font of amusing anecdotes drawn from his own picaresque adventures and from the follies of royals and imperialists. He finds the people friendly, gossipy, and cosmopolitan, but beneath that veneer lies the memory of the country’s brutal civil war between the majority Sinhalese and the Tamil minority’s Tamil Tigers terrorist group, whose suicide bombers besieged Colombo for years. The appalling violence left a historical shadow that, Gimlette observes, many Sri Lankans hide behind an evasive good cheer. Gimlette’s blend of dry wit, entertaining reportage, and perceptive insights makes for another tour de force of travel writing and history, lushly green but edged in darkness. Color photos. Agent: Georgina Capel, Capel and Land.

      • premium: True
      • source: Kirkus
      • content:

        December 15, 2015
        An intrepid journey to the famously reclusive island unearths a paradise amid trauma and obfuscation. Inspired by his intriguing Sri Lankan neighbors in Tooting, London, British travel writer Gimlette (Wild Coast: Travels on South America's Untamed Edge, 2012, etc.) decided to venture to the country formerly known as Ceylon--a tear-shaped tropical island the size of Ireland off the coast of India and made up of 20 million people, mostly Sinhalese, Tamils, and Muslims, and just emerging from a vicious long-running civil war (1983-2009). Gimlette moves geographically in his work, from Colombo, the teeming capital, to the perilous interior once replete with the sites of ancient kingdoms; the western coast, which was plundered by the Portuguese for pearls and cinnamon; the south coast, which was transformed by the next invaders, the Dutch, into a canal-laden vision of their home; and the eastern coast, which contains the gorgeous harbor of Trincomalee, where the British invaded in 1795. Each of the occupiers left something behind--e.g., the British administration and education network, which swept away feudalism and left a system of tea-growing estates in the highlands and a Pax Britannica lasting more than a century. The northeast still retained a trace of the "rogue state" founded by the breakaway Tamil Tigers in 2002. An effortless, elegant writer, Gimlette chronicles the stories of these truculent, traumatized people. He explores the still-reigning caste system that made the "Tea Tamils," the women tea pickers, the most poorly paid workers in the country. The author was especially attuned to the nuances between Sinhalese and Tamil, a hostility stoked in the 1950s by the Sinhalese chauvinism of S.W.R.D. Bandaranaike into civil war. While the war wounds are deep and ugly, Gimlette finds a vibrant country "full of people beginning their thinking again...starting anew, unencumbered by the certainties of war." An exuberant, eye-opening travel quest.

        COPYRIGHT(2015) Kirkus Reviews, ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.

      • premium: True
      • source: Library Journal
      • content:

        January 1, 2016

        Award-winning British travel writer and lawyer Gimlette (Wild Coast; Panther Soup) explores all the regions of the island nation of Sri Lanka, moving between the present and the past (Sri Lanka was consecutively colonized by the Portuguese, the Dutch, and the British from the 16th century on). The narrative is peppered with history, legends, descriptions of scenery, and encounters with Sri Lankans. There are fascinating tidbits: in one episode elephants are kept away from a treehouse by the singing of elephant-scaring songs. A number of topics are covered: the cities of the reservoir kings of ancient Sri Lanka; the kingdom of Kandy, where for ."..222 years the Sinhalese kings kept the Europeans at bay"; the Tamils of the tea plantations; the aboriginal community of Veddahs; and the tsunami of 2004. The most harrowing account is of the civil war that raged from 1983 to 2009, and its grim aftermath. Titles for further reading are listed. Gimlette's prose is vivid, engaging, and sprinkled with humor; his perspective is that of the outsider. VERDICT Armchair travelers, tourists, and students of contemporary Sri Lanka will relish this enthralling account.--Ravi Shenoy, Naperville, IL

        Copyright 2016 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

popularity
34
links
    • self:
        • href: https://api.overdrive.com/v1/collections/v1L1BWwAAAA2I/products/c7a91add-e6f3-42a5-98b1-438229dd06e9/metadata
        • type: application/vnd.overdrive.api+json
id
c7a91add-e6f3-42a5-98b1-438229dd06e9
starRating
4.5
images
    • cover:
        • href: https://img1.od-cdn.com/ImageType-100/0111-1/{C7A91ADD-E6F3-42A5-98B1-438229DD06E9}Img100.jpg
        • type: image/jpeg
    • thumbnail:
        • href: https://img1.od-cdn.com/ImageType-200/0111-1/{C7A91ADD-E6F3-42A5-98B1-438229DD06E9}Img200.jpg
        • type: image/jpeg
    • cover150Wide:
        • href: https://img1.od-cdn.com/ImageType-150/0111-1/C7A/91A/DD/{C7A91ADD-E6F3-42A5-98B1-438229DD06E9}Img150.jpg
        • type: image/jpeg
    • cover300Wide:
        • href: https://img1.od-cdn.com/ImageType-400/0111-1/C7A/91A/DD/{C7A91ADD-E6F3-42A5-98B1-438229DD06E9}Img400.jpg
        • type: image/jpeg
isPublicPerformanceAllowed
False
languages
      • code: en
      • name: English
subjects
      • value: History
      • value: Travel
      • value: Nonfiction
publishDateText
02/16/2016
otherFormatIdentifiers
      • type: ISBN
      • value: 9780385351270
mediaType
eBook
shortDescription
No one sees the world quite like John Gimlette. As The New York Times once noted, “he writes with enormous wit, indignation, and a heightened sense of the absurd.” Writing for both the adventurer and the armchair traveler, he has an eye for unusually telling detail, a sense of wonder, and compelling curiosity for the inside story. This time, he travels to Sri Lanka, a country only now emerging from twenty-six years of civil war. Delving deep into the nation’s story, Gimlette provides us with an astonishing, multifaceted portrait of the island today.
His travels reveal the country as never before. Beginning in the exuberant capital, Colombo (“a hint of anarchy everywhere”), he ventures out in all directions: to the dry zones where the island’s 5,800 wild elephants congregate around ancient reservoirs; through cinnamon country with its Portuguese forts; to the “Bible Belt” of Buddhism—the tsunami-ravaged southeast...
sortTitle
Elephant Complex Travels in Sri Lanka
crossRefId
2356229
subtitle
Travels in Sri Lanka
publisher
Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group
bisacCodes
      • code: HIS048000
      • description: History / Asia / Southeast Asia
      • code: TRV003060
      • description: Travel / Asia / Southeast
      • code: TRV010000
      • description: Travel / Essays & Travelogues