Fictional Island

On the morning of 28 January 1754, an exceptional Englishman sat down at the desk in the library of his gothic mansion, Strawberry Hill, to attend to his correspondence. It was a daily ritual, for the man in question was Horace Walpole, the greatest letter-writer of his era, as well the author of the first Gothic novel, The Castle of Otranto (1764). On that winter's morning, Walpole composed a letter in which he committed to paper for the first time a word – now fashionable, even hackneyed – based on the ancient Arabic name for Sri Lanka. The word was, of course, serendipity, defined by its creator as the faculty of discovery, "by accident and sagacity", while in search of something else.

That the organisers of the 2009 opening of Sri Lanka's much-praised Galle Literary Festival decided to commence events on 28 January, the 205th anniversary of serendipity's coinage, is an astonishing coincidence, for the literary significance of this date is little-known. The date also has another literary connection with Sri Lanka. In fiction, Jules Verne chose 28 January 1868 as the day that Captain Nemo and his fellow submariners aboard the Nautilus first caught sight of the island in Twenty Thousand Leagues under the Sea (1869). Calendar connections aside, Verne epitomises the surprising number of major Western novelists – Daniel Defoe, Charles Dickens, James Joyce, Aldous Huxley, Arthur C Clarke – who have used the island as a location, to varying degrees. In other instances, the island has provided characters or story elements. Some novelists react to the exotic ambience by penning inspired descriptions of the outstanding physical beauty of Sri Lanka. Unusual social and cultural aspects beguile others. Although disparate in style and content, these writings contribute to the rich fabric of fictional versions of the island, in many instances close to the real thing.