Leonard Woolf in Sri Lanka скачать в хорошем качестве

Leonard Woolf in Sri Lanka

Leonard Woolf was a civil servant, author, publisher and someone identified as a liberal intellectual. In 1904, Woolf came to Sri Lanka (then Ceylon) to serve in the Ceylon Civil Service under the British Colonial Administration. He first served in Jaffna & then in Kandy. In 1908 he was sent to the Hambantota District as Assistant Government Agent. His duties included serving as Judge in the District. In case of serious crimes, he had to pass the death sentence on those found guilty. Based on his experience in Hambantota, Woolf wrote The Village in the Jungle which was published in 1913. ‘No jungle was more evil than the jungle which lay about the village of Beddegama’, he wrote, capturing the harsh life in the arid district. The book includes a court scene based on his experience as a judge which captures the helplessness of locals when faced with dispensation of justice by a system alien to them. His book was adapted into an award-winning film in 1980 named Baddegama. Malini Fonseka & Vijaya Kumaratunga played the lead roles in the award-winning adaptation of Woolf’s book. Visitors to Hambantota today can still see the remnants of a time that Woolf served in Ceylon. Overlooking the Indian Ocean, there still stands the open-air gallows where the condemned were hanged by the neck” till he/she was dead. His old courtroom lies bat-infested next to the new court complex in Hambantota, a distant scene from the time when Woolf sat on the Bench with hapless villagers gathered to have their fate decided by a foreigner. Woolf left Sri Lanka in 1911, having served seven years, of which three years was as GA Hambantota. Upon his return to the U.K. he married Virginia in 1912.