22-07-2025
Is Sri Lanka Turning the Page on Its Violent Past?
Delve into the recent crop of prize-winning Sri Lankan literature and you will find a country mired in grief. From Shehan Karunatilaka's 2022 Booker prize-winning The Seven Moons of Maali Almeida, to last year's winner of the UK Women's Prize for Fiction, Brotherless Night, by V.V. Ganeshananthan, to the 2023 Miles Franklin Award winner Chai Time at Cinnamon Gardens by Shankari Chandran, this tiny island nation is reckoning with its past.
The 26-year civil war between the separatist Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam and the government ended in May 2009 without any real attempt to investigate abuses or heal fractured communities. The military has not been held accountable for the atrocities they committed — including torture, rape, extrajudicial killings and enforced disappearances. The LTTE leadership died in battle or were executed, so their use of summary killings, bombings, abductions and child soldiers will never be investigated.
