The Village in the Jungle is
a novel by Leonard Woolf, published in 1913, based on his experiences as a
colonial civil servant in British-controlled Ceylon in the early years of the
20th century. Ground-breaking in Western fiction for being written from the
native rather than the colonial point of view, it is also an influential
work of Sri Lankan literature. It was republished by Eland in 2008.
Background
Leonard
Woolf worked for the British Ceylon Civil Service in Sri Lanka for
seven years after graduating from Cambridge University in 1904. In Cambridge Woolf had met and
befriended members of the Bloomsbury Group. He
became the Assistant Government Agent in Hambantota District, dealing with a variety of
administrative and judicial issues. The district he was in charge of had a
population of 100,000 people. Woolf also kept a comprehensive diary and
later said that his experiences in the country led to him adopting liberal political
views and becoming an opponent of imperialism. He wrote The Village in the Jungle, his first
novel, after he returned from Sri Lanka to England in 1911 while he was
courting his future wife Virginia Stephen. He
dedicated the novel to her.
Plot
The novel
describes the lives of a poor family in a small village called Beddagama as
they struggle to survive the challenges presented by poverty, disease,
superstition, the unsympathetic colonial system, and the jungle itself. The
head of the family is a farmer named Silindu, who has two daughters named
Punchi Menika and Hinnihami. After being manipulated by the village authorities
and a debt collector, Silindu is put on trial for murder.
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