Conversations in a Failing State

To the total stranger, Sri Lanka is no more than the modern name of an erstwhile British colony called Ceylon. Ceylon then would suggest a key export, tea. But between the story of a colony and its reputation as producer of world class tea, there is much to be said about a continually beleaguered present and its emergence from an equally beleaguered past. “Conversations in a failing State” is Patrick Lawrence’s attempt at using the past as mirror to the present. The author achieves this by relying on the recollections of concrete individuals of the Sri Lanka they knew and experienced. Most of these recollections are sad and gray, a story of decline and decay.

Published in March 2008 by the Asian Human Rights Commission; 205 pages, Language: English; ISBN 978-962-8314-36-2; PID: AHRC-PUB-003-2008
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Table of contents

• BOOK REVIEW: “Conversations in a Failing State”
• Chapter One – Arrival
• Chapter Two – Nostalgia
• Chapter Three – Some Pictures of the Past
• Chapter Four – More Pictures
• Chapter Five – Conversions
• Chapter Six – Order and Disorder
• Chapter Seven – Judges
• Chapter Eight – ‘Useless Suffering’
• Chapter Nine – Distances
• Chapter Ten – Galle
• Chapter Eleven – Kandy
• Chapter Twelve – Spaces, Places, Faces