A good complement to Running in the Family - in covering a completely different aspect of the country - and a top read in its own right in terms of educating me about Sri Lanka and setting the scene of its more recent history and social context.
Subramanian, a Tamil Indian, writes clearly, without taking sides (indeed, bringing out by showing rather than telling how futile, absurd and destructive has been the war between the two self-designated sides of the Sinhalese government and the LTTE), and with an impressive level of access to participants and those affected at seemingly all levels of Sri Lanka society - members of the army, former Tigers, their family members, members of parliament, Buddhist monks (including the first of them to go into parliament), the Muslim population (about 10 per cent of the country's population so not insignificant) and many others, most of whom come across as somewhat larger than life and certainly vividly.
What emerges is a portrait of the country today as fundamentally shaped by the long-running war, from 1983 when an LTTE ambush and killing of 13 soldiers triggered riots that killed probably thousands of Tamils and dislodged many more from their homes to the brutal ending in 2009 when the last of the LTTE fighters in the far north east were broken down amidst many thousands more Tamil civilians killed by one or both sides, as well as the unconscionable acts committed by both sides through those nearly 26 years. Subramanian's approach of facilitating the telling of stories or sharing of worldviews and ideologies (or, in some cases, both) by those he meets is effective and often powerful, and all told this struck me as a balanced and clear-sighted account of an incredibly harrowing and awful period and set of events, enormously increasing my understanding of it all.
Subramanian, a Tamil Indian, writes clearly, without taking sides (indeed, bringing out by showing rather than telling how futile, absurd and destructive has been the war between the two self-designated sides of the Sinhalese government and the LTTE), and with an impressive level of access to participants and those affected at seemingly all levels of Sri Lanka society - members of the army, former Tigers, their family members, members of parliament, Buddhist monks (including the first of them to go into parliament), the Muslim population (about 10 per cent of the country's population so not insignificant) and many others, most of whom come across as somewhat larger than life and certainly vividly.
What emerges is a portrait of the country today as fundamentally shaped by the long-running war, from 1983 when an LTTE ambush and killing of 13 soldiers triggered riots that killed probably thousands of Tamils and dislodged many more from their homes to the brutal ending in 2009 when the last of the LTTE fighters in the far north east were broken down amidst many thousands more Tamil civilians killed by one or both sides, as well as the unconscionable acts committed by both sides through those nearly 26 years. Subramanian's approach of facilitating the telling of stories or sharing of worldviews and ideologies (or, in some cases, both) by those he meets is effective and often powerful, and all told this struck me as a balanced and clear-sighted account of an incredibly harrowing and awful period and set of events, enormously increasing my understanding of it all.
