Synopsis This book presents the history of Sri Lanka from the earliest times to the present. Sri Lanka is an ancient civilization, shaped and thrust into the modern globalizing world by its colonial experience. With its own unique problems, many of them historical legacies, it is a nation trying to maintain a democratic, pluralistic state structure while struggling to come to terms with separatist aspirations. This is a complex story, and there is perhaps no better person to present it in reasoned, scholarly terms than K. M. de Silva, Sri Lanka’s most distinguished and prolific historian. “A History of Sri Lanka”, first published in 1981, has established itself as the standard work on the subject.