Kharapu

About the Book

Sri lanka. Terrorist attacks, disappearances and intimidation are common place. The ex-pat community is under threat - the comfortable life of servants, long lunches at the club and pink gins on the plantation verandah is doomed and the last of the colonial masters face expulsion, victims of rising nationalism on the island.

As the violence intensifies Fraser Maclean finds himself caught between his loyalty to the European community and his sympathies for the separatist movement. His dilemma becomes personal when he falls in love with a local girl. Giti is quite happy with her Tamil lover until the day she meets Fraser Maclean. Troubled by her own deceptions, she gives herself to both men and becomes pregnant. As the situation on the island degenerates the question of who the father is becomes more urgent.

Fear and uncertainty, secrecy and deception become the currency of those struggling for power. The dapper Mr Sivriti, Prime Minister in waiting, funds the Tamil separatists in private and condemns them in public; the Commander sends young men to bomb and assassinate in the name of peace and liberty. All of this appears to be a far cry from the solid respectability of the planters and their wives but they, too, have secrets that conceal dangerous games and hidden passions.

Cultivating tea and the rituals of tea drinking are a recurring image of order that contrast with private passions and public mayhem.

The characters lives are finally brought together in a climax that is quite literally explosive.

About the Author

Paul Roberts lives in Oxford and teaches Psychology in a local state school. He was head of English in his previous school and has taught literature for twenty eight years. His first novel, set on a tea plantation, was inspired by a family story and old photographs taken at his uncleÕs estate in Sri Lanka.