INCLUDED IN THE GRANTA SHORTS LIST: a haunting and elegiac love story set in a spoiled paradise, Romesh Gunesekera's debut novel was shortlisted for the Booker Prize.

'A work of strange, slow-motion, underwater intensity. Put your ear to the page and you can almost hear the ocean whisper' Independent A single lighted match banishes Triton from his father's home to the employ of Mister Salgado, a marine biologist obsessed by swamps, sea movements and a Sri Lankan island's disappearing reef. Stranded in London years later, Triton plumbs the depths of his childhood memories - a period of brewing political, ethical and religious turmoil - and brings us to understand how he has navigated this brave new world, which once lost will haunt him forever.

"A kind of Asian Tempest, drenched in the unreal, tropical colours of dream" - Guardian

"Dark as one of Graham Greene's tropical undergrowths, funny in the way that Naipaul can be, multi-layered in the manner of Joyce, evocative as Narayan, Reef is a thing of Beauty" - Scotland on Sunday

"A sensuous feast of delight, incessantly pleasurable to read, the writing, like the reef itself, shimmers with constant surprises" - The Times

"A work of strange, slow-motion, underwater intensity. Put your ear to the page and you can almost hear the ocean whisper" - Independent

"A book of the deepest human interest and moral poise...Very few contemporary novels combine at so high but natural a pitch qualities of epic strength and luminous intimacy" - Independent on Sunday

"A big treat to discover Gunesekera's magical evocation of a Sri Lanka on the brink of destruction" - Daily Mail

"An astute evocation of Sri Lanka as it approached a time of upheaval" - Irish Times