Alexander McKinley studies the religious traditions of Sri Lanka, especially their connections and transformations across past and present. He received a PhD in religion and modernity from Duke University and teaches at Lake Forest College and Loyola University Chicago.
Mountain at a Center of the World folds Adam's Peak in Sri Lanka into a kaleidoscope of swirling perspectives, from history, from literature, and from the mountain itself. McKinley displays a fascinating and utterly brilliant ability to dance quite effortlessly between various different scholarly fields and weave together multiple threads of questions, interlacing mythological stories with their functionality in various religious and cultural contexts. I am truly bowled over by the author’s efforts. -- Vijaya Nagarajan, author of <i>Feeding a Thousand Souls: Women, Ritual, and Ecology in India—An Exploration of the Kolam</i>