They were ordinary people-farmers, fisherfolk, businessmen, pensioners, housewives and school children-until a relentless war machine invaded their lives.
These are their stories-stories of intense suffering, but also of great courage, resilience and dignity.
Nirupama Subramanian, a journalist who spent seven years reporting the vicious face-off between Sri Lanka's government and the separatist LTTE, criss-crossed the towns and villages of a beautiful but ravaged island to uncover these 'little histories'.
For her these little histories are of children forcibly recruited into Tiger training camps; of parents waiting for mass graves to reveal their bleak secrets.Stories of people fleeing their homes in war zones only to become prisoners in refugee camps; of the families of the missing who still wait and hope; of women in the maid-trade bonded in virtual slavery in foreign lands.
Woven into these narratives are the larger stories — of a President, Chandrika Kumaratunga, elected with a massive mandate for peace but trapped in a war so intense that she was unable to make good her promise.
{{/usCountry}}Woven into these narratives are the larger stories — of a President, Chandrika Kumaratunga, elected with a massive mandate for peace but trapped in a war so intense that she was unable to make good her promise.
{{/usCountry}}And of Tiger supremo Vellupillai Prabhakaran, trapped too, but in a cage fashioned out of his own egoism and ruthlessness-one he never dare leave.
As Sri Lanka searches for an elusive peace, read this book to understand the price that Sri Lankans have paid for a war that has raged for over twenty years.