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For a small island, Sri Lanka has many nicknames: Serendib, Ceylon, Teardrop of India, Resplendent Isle, Island of Dharma, Pearl of the Orient. This colourful collection reveals its richness and beauty, and the intensity of affection that it has evoked in visitors. For centuries it seduced travellers, who returned home with enchanting images of a languorous tropical isle of such deep spirituality and serenity that it entered the Western imagination as a Tahiti of the East. Unfortunately, this is the same island that has been traumatized by a ferocious ethnic and religious conflict for over a decade. It has punctured the most willful exoticism and burned Sri Lanka into Western minds as the Northern Ireland of the Indian Ocean.