An in-depth look at a beautiful island paradise devastated by a thirty-year war and the tsunami Weaving together reporting, travelogue, and personal narrative, debut author Adele Barker brings American readers with her to experience Sri Lanka, "the resplendent island" that seems to hang like a teardrop from the tip of India. Barker's account of the year and a half she spent living and teaching there moves deftly from the daily, personal details of Sri Lankan life and culture to reports on the war between the government and the Tamil Tigers, and the 2004 tsunami in which forty-eight thousand Sri Lankans died in the space of twenty minutes. Life on the island is complex for a Westerner, and Barker does not miss any of the nuances: the beauty and the bugs; the peaceful, Buddhist pace of life; and the explosive ravages of civil war. Barker acquaints us with the history of the place, the literature, and the traditions of Buddhism, Hinduism, missionary Christianity, and ancient myths. "Not Quite Paradise" offers a comprehensive, eye-opening account of the "pearl" of the Indian Ocean and a rare perspective on the massive devastation of the tsunami of December 26, 2004.