Beautiful Place by Amanthi Harris

Beautiful Place by Amanthi Harris

Beautiful Place is a novel about leaving and losing home and making family. It is about being oppressed and angry and wanting a better life – but how is a better life to be defined? The Villa Hibiscus is a house by the sea on the exquisite southern coast of Sri Lanka, home to Padma, a young Sri Lankan woman. The owner of the villa, Gerhardt, is an elderly Austrian architect to whom Padma was taken when young by her scheming father, Sunny, who had hoped to seduce the wealthy new foreigner in the area with his attractive child. Gerhardt adopts Padma and pays Sunny to stay away until she’s grown up – when Gerhardt expects to have sent Padma to university, far away. But Padma fails her exams and is lonely in the city, gladly returning to her beloved old home by the sea. With Gerhardt’s help she creates a guesthouse at the villa and soon guests start to arrive, opening new vistas for Padma through their friendship and love. Then Sunny appears, ready to reclaim his daughter...

This emotionally charged debut novel resonates like a deeply felt memory

* Grazia *

Set around the Villa Hibiscus guest house on the southern coast of Sri Lanka, it Beautiful Place features a global cast of characters who are all in some way searching for identity, family and a place to belong. It’s something of a quiet epic, a lengthy novel to relax into, but with a seismic event that forces everyone to reassess their loyalties and what a better life might mean. As the title suggests, Harris has a keen eye for a sense of place, and though the pace is slow, the mood and emotion are compelling.

-- Ben East * Observer *

Amanthi Harris was born in Sri Lanka and grew up in London. She studied Fine Art at Central St Martins and has degrees in Law and Chemistry from Bristol University. Her novella Lantern Evening won the Gatehouse Press New Fictions Prize 2016 and is published by Gatehouse Press (2017). Her short stories have been published by Serpent’s Tail and broadcast on BBC Radio 4 as Afternoon Readings.

SKU	Unavailable
ISBN 13	9781784631932
ISBN 10	1784631930
Title	Beautiful Place
Author	Amanthi Harris
Condition	Unavailable
Binding Type	Paperback
Publisher	Salt Publishing
Year published	2019-10-15
Number of pages	560
Cover note	Book picture is for illustrative purposes only, actual binding, cover or edition may vary.