 The Village in the Jungle
Leonard Woolf Pages: 216
ISBN: 0 907871 29 1
Area of interest: Sri Lanka
Genre: Fiction, Travel Date of first publication: 1913
Eland publication date: November 15, 2005
Price: £9.99
This novel set in Ceylon follows the lives of a handful of villagers hacking out a fragile existence in a jungle where indiscriminate growth, indifferent fate and malevolent neighbours constantly threaten to overwhelm them. It is as if Thomas Hardy were immersed in the heat, scent, sensuality and pungent mystery of the tropics. Seven years as a colonial administrator gave Woolf first-hand knowledge of the injustice of colonial rule, and an acute psychological sympathy with the villagers. He skilfully incorporates local story-telling traditions and beliefs into his chilling narrative, to create a book which remains one of the best-loved in Sri Lanka to this day.
biography of Leonard Woolf
'A superbly dispassionate observation, a great novel...' Quentin Bell
'As fatalistic as a Greek tragedy ... reading it has been a real experience and not one readily forgotten.' New Statesman 'The Village in the Jungle is not a work of art - it is a miracle in writing. At no time has the author's more celebrated wife, Virginia Woolf, approached this height in workmanship.' Chicago Tribune
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