P.G. Punchihewa’s  ‘The Shattered Earth’ is the most important book to come out of Sri Lanka since Leonard Woolf’s ‘Village in the Jungle’ and deserves to be placed alongside Woolf’s work as a school text and should be turned into a film. Both Woolf and Punchihewa were GA’s, Woolf before and Punchihewa after the end of the Raj but the differences and similarities are unending. It is said that the jungle never changes and this Woolf’s is leitmotiv but by the time of ‘The Shattered Earth’ change had come in the form of the government of the day in the late sixties, permitting unscrupulous businessmen with the right connections to buy up vast tracts of jungle, sell off the timber and - most central to Punchihewa’s gripping narrative – displace the peasant farmers and turn them into common labourers.

    It is this theme that makes the Shattered Earth the work of genius that it is. As a GA Punchihewa was responsible for almost 3000 square miles, the second largest administrative district in the island yet medical care was rudimentary and restricted to a single district hospital with one director, two pharmacists and no nurses. Most of the population relied on chena cultivation and it is the fate of these chena workers which is the heart and soul of the story. The opening of chapter one is pure poetry and a match for Woolf’s.

When Kirisanda woke, the sun was already up. He thought he didn’t hear the familiar sounds of cawing crows or the yammering birds as he had fallen asleep fairly late in the night. It was two weeks since the full moon day of Duruthu, but even after the sun had risen, it was still cold. He remembered covering himself from head to foot in the night with loosened sarong. This time the Maha rains had set in late. It seemed the cold days would last longer than usual. He blew out the hurricane lamp which was still burning and cursed himself for letting the kerosene oil go waste. Climbing down the ladder from the tree-hut, he remembered his dream just before he woke up. He knew that one’s dreams in Duruttha, the cold month, should not be taken seriously. However he faintly recalled that it was ominous

                        (The Shattered Earth)

The village was called Beddagama, which means the village in the jungle. It lay in the low country or plains, midway between the sea and the great mountains which seem, far away to the north, to rise like a long wall straight up from the sea of trees. It was in, and of, the jungle; the air and smell of the jungle lay heavy upon it - the smell of hot air, of dust, and of dry and powdered leaves and sticks. Its beginning and its end was in the jungle, which stretched away from it on all sides unbroken north and south and east and west, to the blue line of the hills and to the sea. The jungle surrounded it, overhung it, continually pressed in upon it. It stood at the door of the houses, always ready to press in upon the compounds and open spaces, to break through the mud huts, and to choke up the tracks and paths.

                        (The Village in the Jungle)

    Kirisanda, the novel’s central character, supports his family by cultivating a chena at some considerable distance from his home. The reader is plunged into the central drama of the novel when Kirisanda encounters the village headman leading a party of strangers who turn out to be the directors of the company. The background of the novel, which sometimes becomes the foreground, is the jungle itself with its vegetation, its mythical past aralu, bulu and nelli trees said to have been planted by ancient Sinhala kings. To prevent the erosive ‘slash and burn’ techniques chena cultivation was under strict control, a policy which had led to a huge decline in the rural population – a parallel to the ‘industrial revolution’ two centuries before in England. Punchihewa has woven history into the narrative so well that the finished tapestry is a seamless garment, a story yes but what a story!

    A villagers’ co-operative meeting is called and the members discover that the government has sold off a large chena cultivation area to a company that will cut down the valuable timber and sell it off. The discussions are well documented and we are gradually introduced to the machinations of politicians, local and national, including the self seeking local MP. What we see is a yawning gap between honest hard working but largely illiterate peasant farmers and corrupt fat cats. The local MP is pictured as flabby and pot-bellied, with a fat face that masks the lean look he once had. He says he has sent memos to various ministers and will send more but is all in vain. Once decisions of this kind have been made it is the story of the felled tree that will never grow again.

    Meetings are described in detail because it is in them that the contrasts between those with and those who without power are painfully but beautifully articulated. The GA knew the score exactly, how deforestation leads to soil erosion, floods, droughts and ecological damage yet on the other there were unsophisticated, innocent peasants who do not need roads, electricity or radios. What they need is a small land of paddy and water. More than anything they need to be left alone.

    The corruption of power and the inevitable victory of those who hold it unfolds chapter by chapter. The company has been granted the land to develop by the government and is headed by a vastly rich doctor in charge of a large private hospital in Colombo. Together with his apparatchiks he moves the pieces on the chess board to wipe out the opposition. Always the peasants have hope and a naïve belief that the great and good in government will come to their aid and that hope is always disappointed.

    As well as the central narrative there are fascinating minor characters of which Mudalali, the small shopkeeper, a born survivor, is the most interesting. Everyone but Kirisanda gives up their chenas without a fight. Blindly, desperately Kirisanda carries on, thwarted at every stage by the machinations of the company, which manages to isolate his chena in company land and erects a ‘Do not Trespass’ board to prevent him from working it. We learn that there was another plan, dormant for decades to develop the Wavul Ela river which would have vastly enhanced rice cultivation yet somehow it always stayed on the drawing boards because of the cost.

    Finally Kirisanda packs up his meager belongings and moves to a far off place his brother-in-law has found for him. In a sense it is a story with happy ending but there is much more to it. The Shattered Earth is a historical narrative, underpinned by an in-depth analysis of the economic, demographic and processes at work. Punchihewa is a national treasure and the Shattered Earth is his masterpiece as much as The Village in the Jungle was Woolf’s, Sons and Lovers was Lawrence’s and Cider with Rosie was Laurie Lee’s. It is a book to be read and treasured. Reading it is an unforgettable experience.

Barry Tebb

UK writer and publisher

(An edited version of this review The Jungle in the Village appeared in the Sunday Times Sri Lanka June 2008)