The Road from Elephant Pass (Novel)
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| Author | Nihal De Silva |
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| Country | Sri Lanka |
| Language | Sinhala & English |
| Genre | Action, Thriller |
| Published | 2003 |
| Publisher | Vijitha Yapa Publications |
| ISBN | |
The Road From Elephant Pass is a novel by Nihal De Silva. It won the 2003 Gratiaen Prize for creative writing in English. This novel is nominated as a selection for the Sri Lankan Advanced Level Literature examinations. It has been given the themes of war and survival. The book is a great resource for the learning of survival techniques and for handling situations in a complicated relationship. The characters Wasantha and Kamala fall in love even though they belong to completely different races and liberation organisations. The novel was subsequently made into a film with the same name.
The Sinhalese name for this novel is Alimankada. (Kada which means 'far-edge' or 'boundary;' and Mankada means 'checkpoint' or 'bottleneck pass'). Alimankada was recorded by the Dutch as the Northern border of the Kandyan Kingdom.
This novel battles with diverse situations including ethnic conflicts and birds. Both of these issues are given equal importance and veracity by the writer. Reflecting the writer's activities as a keen bird watcher, the pied kingfishers, hawks, eagle-owls, blue-faced malkohas, paradise flycatchers, hornbills, brown-headed barbets, hanging parrots, rose-ringed parakeets, lapwings are among the many birds mentioned in this novel. The plot of the novel centers around Captain Wasantha Ratnayake and a woman named Kamala Velaithan, who is a member of the LTTE Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE), venturing through a dense and luscious Wilpattu forest in northern Sri Lanka. Kamala Velaithan volunteers to offer help to the Sri Lanka Army regarding the provision of some useful information. Kemala is handed over to Wasantha, who picks her up to take her in for questioning. Meanwhile, on the way to their destination, an ambush by an LTTE gang results in their driver and an Army lady dying in a hail of bullets. The two survivors, Kamala and Wasantha are forced into a mutually co-operative situation which later broadens and deepens to the extent that they find it hard to operate without each other. The novel focuses on the relationship which grows between these two people, who, at their first encounter with one another, were enemies. Together, they survive poachers, elephants and the extreme dangers of the jungle. These intense experiences, which force them into mutual co-operation, eventually evolve into an unexpected love affair. The story depicts them spending about 12 days together, each chapter of the novel intertwining with the others in unique forms of complementarity which serve to provide the novel with a richness of style in the progress and development of its plot. After they reach Colombo Army Headquarters, Kamala reveals to Wasantha that she had lied to him and that they are, in fact heading into a trap. But it was too late. The ending is tragic and the lovers end up being separated one from another. However, the film, though based on the novel, has a different ending.
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