The Village in the Jungle is a novel by Leonard Woolf, published in 1913, based on his experiences as a colonial civil servant in British-controlled Ceylon (now Sri Lanka) in the early years of the 20th century.

Ground-breaking in Western fiction for being written from the native rather than the colonial point of view,[1] it is also an influential work of Sri Lankan literature.

Leonard Woolf worked for the British Ceylon Civil Service in Sri Lanka for seven years after graduating from Cambridge University in 1904.

[1] Woolf also kept a comprehensive diary while there, and later said that his experiences in the country led to him adopting liberal political views and becoming an opponent of imperialism.

[2] He wrote The Village in the Jungle, his first novel, after he returned from Sri Lanka to England in 1911[1] while he was courting his future wife Virginia Stephen.