Author Arthur C. Clarke loses Lanka school

The author of 2001: A Space Odyssey is Sri Lanka's most famous guest-resident:

British-born science fiction author Arthur C Clarke who has made Sri Lanka his adopted home lost his diving school with the deadly tsunami eerily echoing a plotline from his first book on the island...

"Curiously enough, in my first book on Sri Lanka, I had written about another tidal wave reaching the Galle harbour," he said.

"That happened in August 1883, following the eruption of Krakatoa in roughly the same part of the Indian Ocean."

He was referring to the submarine earthquake in the Indian Ocean off Indonesia that triggered the tsunami which devastated coastlines of seven Asian nations, with Sri Lanka one of the hardest hit.

More here, and also see this.