Serendipity by Ashok Ferrey

Piyumi Segarajasingham is a young barrister in eighties London, half Tamil and half Sinhalese and newly responsible for her family’s share of an inheritance in Sri Lanka. The servants’ quarters of a house called Serendipity in Colombo’s colonial quarter, Cinnamon Gardens, is now her charge—she wants to keep it, her relatives are keen to sell. So begins Piyumi’s journey home, full of a host of memorable characters and the hilarious happenstance of daily life in Colombo, haunted by the memory of a stranger she met back in London—will they ever get together? Set in a more innocent time— Sri Lanka’s civil war had only just begun—Serendipity is satire, thriller and comedy of manners all in one, told with Ferrey’s trademark wit.