Trouble in Nuala

Travel Guide

1930s Ceylon

The series of novels by Harriet Steel nicely capture the time and place of the country – ruled by the British but with a nice melting pot of cultures, ideas and way of life.

“‘Rickshaws darted between bullock carts laden with sacks of rice; piles of bananas and coconuts; and mounds of other fruits and vegetables. Stalls offering cooked food lined the dusty streets and passers-by stopped to purchase bowls of curry and rice or paper cornets of sticky sweetmeats.’”

On the Renshaw plantation ( in the fictional hill town of Nuala), there is trouble afoot. The town is several miles from Colombo, the bustling city and up, high in the hills…it may well be another world.

The time of British rule in Ceylon:

“Many didn’t bother to understand what a melting pot his country was. First the Sinhalese, his own people – the true and original owners of Ceylon – then the Tamils, either coming in over the centuries in waves of invasion from South India or brought to Ceylon more recently by the British to pick the tea.”

De Silva’s wife is British and this makes for a nice cultural mix in the books:

“Wherever the British went, de Silva mused, they had the knack of recreating a little corner of England. One day, they would leave and give Ceylon back to her people but, for the moment, the tendency had a certain charm.”

The English have firmly implanted themselves in the country and so much so that the language and culture are evident in the every day detail, nicely  evoked by the novels.