NPW’s volume is a fascinating story of Kandyan culture and society. It is a personal story, and not a scholarly work. She draws from many sources and especially from her family and individual experience, and distilling from those, she narrates an intriguing story of a changing Kandyan culture, largely based on her traditional village of Boyagama. It is delightful to peep into a lost world in a distant Kandyan village. Sixty years ago, the Economics faculty of the University at Peradeniya undertook research in a Kandyan village and came up with a study called the "Disintegrating Village". That was done by outsiders and NPW’s study is based on her own experience. NPW’s volume is divided into three parts – the first part dealing with her life in Boyagama, the second part addressing cultural aspects of life like food, arts and crafts and architecture, and always with a personal touch, and the third part dealing with several general issues – history of the Kandyan Kingdom, Kandyan identity, marriage and divorce, the caste system and land and cultivation. Many beautiful photographs and pictures adorn the pages of this volume. NPW is a well-known journalist writing her own weekly column, and she has been much more in her past. A teacher, librarian, novelist, social critic, she has written other books, and many and varied issues and subjects are grist to her mill and the object of her learned and learning curiosity.