Noontide Toll: Stories

<i>The driver's job is to stay in control behind the wheel and that is all. The past is what you leave as you go. There is nothing more to it.</i><br><br>Vasantha retired early, bought himself a van with his savings, and now works as a driver for hire. As he drives through Sri Lanka, carrying aid workers, businessmen, and families and meeting lonely soldiers and eager hoteliers, he engages them with self-deprecating wit and folksy wisdom - and reveals for us their uncertain lives.<br><br>On his journey from the army camps in northern Jaffna to the moonlit ramparts of Galle, in the south, Vasantha begins to discover the depth of the problems of the past - his own and his country's - and the promise the future might hold.<br><br>From the writer praised by <i>The Guardian</i> for the &quot;vivid originality&quot; of his vision, here is a wonderful collection - perceptive, somber, finely tuned - that draws a potent portrait of postwar Sri Lanka and the ghosts of civil war.<br>