Broke’n’English

Back in 2004, Jerry Smith and his wife Sally decided to stake their future on running a guest house in Sri Lanka, where Sally had been born and raised. It was country in the grip of Asia’s longest civil war, a country of whose laws, customs and culture they knew little; Sally had left the island aged thirteen when it was still Ceylon.

Investing every penny they had in their project, owning no property in England, it was an act of astounding stupidity, naïvety or courage, depending on your point of view. It took another eleven years, dogged by communication failures, financial setbacks and natural disasters before they finally came to live in Sri Lanka at the end of 2015. Broke ‘n’ English is an often hilarious account of how a couple in their later years, short on money and big on dreams, learned to live in a land whose values, traditions, politics and laws – and especially language – are a strange mix of east and west. This is a book for dreamers, armchair adventurers, or those who just want a good laugh.