Why a Booktrail?
2001: The destruction and chaos of the Sri Lankan civil war haunts and many years later in London, the 2001 bombings brings renewed horror and reveals a story across the years and across countries
Brixton Beach
What you need to know before your trail
London
One July morning in 2005, a series of bombs brings the capital to a halt. Simon Swann, a medic from the local hospital desperately searches in the rubble but who is he looking for and why? Ss the sirens fill the air and the emergency services arrive, Simon becomes more agitated.
Sri Lanka –
The story starts on a small island in the Indian Ocean and where a little girl is learning to ride a bike. Little Alice however will see her life change irrevocably as death and destruction come to the island in the form of civil war. She and her mother flee to England but they can’t escape everything they leave behind.
Many years later and Alice is working in London but the chaos and war of her childhood seem have come to British shores, The War on terror starts and she and others are caught up in this new kind of war.
Locations
ResetTravel Guide
The novel opens with an extremely apt line from Jack Kerouac –
All of life is a foreign country
`Brixton Beach’ opens with a scene you will never forget – that of the horrific bombings in 2005 London. To find yourself in this situation even in a novel is scary and disturbing and the chaos and confusion are brutally drawn
Ceylon
Thirty years previous and we meet Alice in war-torn Ceylon – She is the daughter of a Singhalese mother and a Tamil father. Her best friend and closest confidante is grandfather Bee – who she is torn from as the family moves to England. She is at a cultural crossroads on the island since she is essentially part of two different cultures the very people who are now fighting and dividing on the island.
Their world is at first one of colour and intense vivid tapestries of light –
The afternoon was bathed in an intense and luminescent light. It fell in low, late slants but because of the breeze, it gave no hint of its strength. Bee waited, watching as the turquoise blue Sea Serpent emerged through the thick bank of coconut and plantain trees.
London
When Alice comes to London, the level of isolation and cultural integration she feels is not improved here for London too is melting pot of cultures where the pot may bubble and get very hot and heated but where there is not much melting of cultures sadly. so once again she is an outsider, this time in her new adopted land.
Streetview Maps
B) London - Tavistock Square
D) Sri Lanka - Mount Lavinia Railway station
Booktrail Boarding Pass Information:
Destination: Sri Lanka Departure Time: 2001
Brixton Beach
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