This book provides valuable recognition of the impact the Left has had on Sri Lanka. In terms of the contributions, the essays manage to cover quite a bit of material, all while re-emphasizing common themes in the history of the Left. Of course, the Left in Sri Lanka is currently defined more by its absence than its presence. At the same time both its historical contribution to culture and society and its continuing potential as a critical imaginary means we must take stock of its defeats and victories. Such a genealogy may enable us to obtain a critical perspective on the present and the apparently inexorable decline of the Left in Sri Lanka; a fate it shares with similar movements elsewhere around the world. In this regard, the collection is extremely useful for critically reflecting on these developments. In the case of the essays they are organised both along thematic and historical lines. Generally the earlier chapters focus on the emergence of the Left, particularly the Trotskyist Lanka Sama Samaja Party (LSSP), from the 1930s to the height of its power as part of the Sri Lanka Freedom Party-led coalition government in the 1970s. Later chapters tend to focus more on the transformation and decline of the Left after the insurrection and subsequent repression of Sinhala Marxist youth led by the JanathaVimukthi Peramuna (JVP) in 1971. The quality and content of the contributions, similar to many other edited collections, is at times uneven. Some remain committed to organising empirical materials, others are more theoretical and impressionistic, and still others biographical. Nevertheless while the strengths and weaknesses occasionally end up working against each other, the end result is a more polyvalent discourse that achieves the editors' goal of pluralising our understanding of the Sri Lankan Left and its possibilities.