A single lighted match banishes Triton from his father's home to the employ of Mister Salgado, a marine biologist obsessed by swamps, sea movements and a Sri Lankan island's disappearing reef. Stranded in London years later, Triton plumbs the depths of his childhood memories - a period of brewing political, ethical and religious turmoil - and brings us to understand how he has navigated this brave new world, which once lost will haunt him forever.

The internationally celebrated (and Booker Prize-shortlisted) author returns with a dazzling coming-of-age story set in post-independence Sri Lanka A master storyteller. --The New York Times Ceylon is on the brink of change. But young Kairo is at loose ends. School is closed, the government is in disarray, the press is under threat, and the religious right are flexing their muscles. Kairo's hardworking mother blows off steam at her cha-cha-cha classes; his Trotskyist father grumbles over the state of the nation between his secret bets on horse races in faraway England. All Kairo wants to do is hide in his room and flick through secondhand westerns and superhero comics, or escape on his bicycle and daydream. Then he meets the magnetic teenage Jay, and his whole world is turned inside out. A budding naturalist and a born rebel, Jay keeps fish and traps birds for an aviary he is building in the garden of his grand home. As Jay guides Kairo from the realm of make-believe into one of hunting guns and fast cars and introduces him to a girl-- Niromi--Kairo begins to understand the price of privilege and embarks on a journey of devastating consequence. Taut and luminous, graceful and wild, Suncatcher is a poignant coming-of-age novel about difficult friendships and sudden awakenings set among the tumult of 1960s Sri Lanka, that confirms Gunesekera's status as one of today's most lyrical writers.

The Sandglass tells the story of two feuding families whose lives are interlinked by the changing fortunes of postcolonial Sri Lanka. Moving back and forth between London and Sri Lanka, the novel brings to life Prins Ducal and his search for answers about his family's past, including his father's rise to wealth, rivalry with the Vatunas family, and a suspicious death - a mystery that further unfolds upon Prins's arrival in London for his mother's funeral. Re-printed by Granta in a beautiful new edition.

This vivid and haunting short-story collection flows smoothly together to create a masterful portrait of contemporary Sri Lanka; a country of teeming natural beauty, with a society in turmoil. A married couple, living in London, find their marriage strained by fighting in their far-off homeland. A man mourns his brother's death. A woman regrets the lover she left behind. Between exile and loss, Gunesekera's characters struggle for the elusive and divided place that they call home. Re-printed by Granta in a beautiful new edition.

1964. Ceylon is on the brink of change. But Kairo is at a loose end. School is closed, the government is in disarray, the press is under threat and the religious right are flexing their muscles. Kairo's hard-working mother blows off steam at her cha-cha-cha classes; his Trotskyite father grumbles over the state of the nation between his secret flutters on horseraces in faraway England. All Kairo wants to do is hide in his room and flick over second-hand westerns and superhero comics, or escape on his bicycle and daydream.

Then he meets the magnetic teenage Jay, and his whole world is turned inside out.

A budding naturalist and a born rebel, Jay keeps fish and traps birds for an aviary he is building in the garden of his grand home. The adults in Jay's life have no say in what he does or where he goes: he holds his beautiful, fragile mother in contempt, and his wealthy father seems fuelled by anger. But his Uncle Elvin, suave and worldly, is his encourager. As Jay guides him from the realm of make believe into one of hunting-guns and fast cars and introduces him to a girl - Niromi - Kairo begins to understand the price of privilege and embarks on a journey of devastating consequence.

Taut and luminous, graceful and wild, Suncatcher is a poignant coming-of-age novel about difficult friendships and sudden awakenings. Mesmerizingly it charts the loss of innocence and our recurring search for love - or consolation - bringing these extraordinary lives into our own.

Reef is the elegant and moving story of Triton, a talented young chef so committed to pleasing his master's palate that he is oblivious to the political unrest threatening his Sri Lankan paradise. It is a personal story that parallels the larger movement of a country from a hopeful, young democracy to troubled island society. It is also a mature, poetic novel which the British press has compared to the works of James Joyce, Graham Greene, V.S. Naipaul, and Anton Chekhov. With his collection of short stories Monkfish Moon - a New York Times Notable Book of 1993 - Romesh Gunesekera quickly established himself as a leading literary voice. Reef earned universal praise from European critics and landed the young author on the short list for the 1994 Booker Prize, England's highest honor for fiction. Reef explores the entwined lives of Mr. Salgado, an aristocratic marine biologist and student of sea movements and the disappearing reef, and his houseboy, Triton, who learns to polish silver until it shines like molten sun; to mix a love cake with ten eggs, creamed butter, and fresh cadju nuts; to marinade tiger prawns; and to steam parrot fish. Through these characters and the forty years of political disintegration their country endures, Gunesekera tells the tragic, sometimes comic, story of a lost paradise and a young man coming to terms with his destiny.