Return to Sri Lanka: Travels in a Paradoxical Land

Razeen Sally was born to a Sri Lankan Muslim father and a Welsh mother. Just before his teens, a political conflict tore his family apart and he left Sri Lanka, barely going back for thirty years.

When he finally returned ‘home’, he spent much of the next decade crisscrossing the island, trying to understand this paradoxical place. Blessed with nature’s bounty and an easy, pleasure-loving people, it was nevertheless scarred by ethnic conflict and the violence of civil war.

As a native and a tourist, Sally makes an ideal guide to Sri Lanka’s past and present. In this lecture he will share his journeys and insights, pointing out the unmissable gems beyond the obvious spots, and unpacking the nation’s culture and history.

Razeen Sally is a Sri Lankan–British writer. He taught political economy and international relations at the National University of Singapore and the London School of Economics, before becoming a full-time travel writer. As a professor, he held visiting academic positions and was involved with think tanks in Europe, Asia, the USA and Africa, and was a senior policy adviser to the Sri Lankan government. Sally is the Director of the European Centre for International Political Economy, now Europe’s leading trade-policy think tank, which he co-founded in 2006. 

He now divides his time between the family home in North Wales and travel in Asia, and continues to spend several months of the year in Sri Lanka.

Purchase Sally’s book Return to Sri Lanka: Travels in a Paradoxical Land here.