Tab Article

Ratings: ★★★★☆ (4/5)
Genre: Travel Writing, Memoir, Sri Lankan History, Colonial Era, Non-Fiction.

Book Review:
''The Kandy Road'' is a rare and charming literary artifact, offering a window into a bygone Ceylon through the eyes of one of its most influential foreign figures. Sir William Ivor Jennings, the architect of the University of Ceylon and a towering constitutional scholar, reveals a different, more personal side in this posthumous work. Rather than a legal or political treatise, this is a loving tribute to the historic highway that connected his two worlds—the administrative capital, Colombo, and the academic idyll, Peradeniya.

Over fifteen years of travel, Jennings transformed his daily or weekly commutes into a meditative exploration. The book is, as the blurb notes, ''a singularly absorbing traveller's tale.'' He observes the changing landscapes, the villages, the people, and weaves in historical anecdotes and romantic reflections with a ''distinctive perception and an engaging delight.'' It is less a guidebook and more a conversation with a deeply knowledgeable and affectionate companion.

For readers interested in Sri Lanka's colonial and early post-colonial era, this book is a treasure. It provides an intimate, ground-level view of the country from a unique perspective—that of a brilliant outsider who helped shape its educational destiny and came to love it as home. Jennings' elegant prose and insightful observations make ''The Kandy Road'' a journey worth taking for anyone captivated by Sri Lanka's history and beauty.