This Divided Island

All wars are devastating, but the Sri Lankan civil war which raged for three decades was more so than others: in its length, its brutality and its deadly blend of religious, linguistic and ethnic strife. Hidden within the crevices of this war are human histories that have gone unexamined and the panoply of deep emotions they contain - loss, fear, pity and doubt - as well as startling moments of joy and compassion. Travelling across Sri Lanka, Samanth Subramanian records the stories of ordinary people living through traumatic times, maps the psychological terrain of a deeply scarred country and discovers the numerous ways - both banal and extraordinary - in which war can bend and warp human existence.