Terror and Reconciliation: Sri Lankan Anglophone Literature, 1983-2009

“Jayasuriya’s work is a thought-provoking engagement with matters of violence and the violence of memory, as well as questions of literary forms of mourning and the shared precarity of lives in the midst of ethnic conflict. Through a close reading of a wide variety of Sri Lankan ‘stay-at-home’ and diasporic writers and varied historiographic positions, Jayasuriya’s theoretically accomplished work demonstrates how ‘the literature of conflict’ might also offer ways of dealing with loss, a nation’s scarred history and grief. Her attention to literary constructions of empathy, unsettlement and reconciliation in Arasanayagam, Ondaatje, Selvadurai, Vanderpoorten, Wijeratne and other writers make the work relevant not only to the specifics of Sri Lankan literature but also to any literature that negotiates trauma, ethnicide and cultural memory. There is a wealth of material here, neatly organized, and a sustained interrogation of literary form and theme which makes Terror and Reconciliation a necessary, and valuable, addition to reading lists for trauma studies, postcolonial studies and conflict writing studies.” –Pramod K. Nayar, University of Hyderabad, India, author of Writing Wrongs: The Cultural Construction of Human Rights in India (2012)

“Terror and Reconciliation is a comprehensive and probing study of Sri Lankan Anglophone literature; it represents an important contribution to the growing body of scholarship on post-1983 armed conflict(s) in Sri Lanka. What is unique about this book is that it gives prominence to long-neglected resident Sri Lankan writers, whose work is rarely circulated beyond South Asia. As such, Jayasuriya’s work should be compulsory reading for all Sri Lankan studies scholars as well as specialists in the field of conflict studies.” –Nalin Jayasena, Miami University

“This informative book thus studies Sri Lankan novels and poetry in English of the war years up to 2009 as a literature which provides a space for reconciliation by cutting across ethnic boundaries. Quoting Nihal de Silva – “I feel strongly that the road to settling our problem is for people to interact, and that their humanity has to do the rest” (90) – Jayasuriya argues that Sri Lankan identity and Sri Lankan literature must now be framed in different terms (158). She concludes by praising these writers for providing grounds for optimism, which, it is to be hoped, Sri Lankan anglophone literature after this period will go on to explore.” —Journal of Postcolonial Writing