Author: Jean Arasanayagam
Publisher: Indialog Publications
Year: 2002
Language: English
Pages: 182
ISBN/UPC (if available): 8187981229
Description
War. Excruciating pain. Identity crisis. Twelve short stories. The Dividing Line.
Jean Arasanayagam's expiation of the testing times that Sri Lanka has been thrown into, torn apart by a long civil war. The stories are all woven in a realm of the somber and radiate an uneasy calm. She sketches an unnerving world where things fall apart - places, relationships, identities.
Arasanayagam's voice is the voice of protest, her tone acerbic, her stories an archaeology of the oppressed. Yet in the midst of all carnage she yearns for a world where pain, malice and hatred find no place, a paradise in which love and peace reign supreme.
Arasanayagam's stories emanate from within a distinctly perturbed mind over issues universal. A brilliant rendering of tired and tattered strings of familial bonding unable to cope with the uncertainty of the modern world. On the whole a superlative collection which delineates an atrophied world and its decrepitude.
Contents
The Garden Party
Of Love and Loneliness
The Witness
The Sack
The Last Refuge
The Adoption
The Cry of the Kite
The prediction
Exodus
The Bridge
The Wisdom Mantra
The Dividing Line