When the tanks rumble past in the far fields, I feel it breathe when the air strikes start and the blood flows, I feel it lick its lips.' It does not store any personal data.'Sometimes I get this breathless feeling that the war is a living creature, something huge, with a pointed tongue and wicked claws. The cookie is set by the GDPR Cookie Consent plugin and is used to store whether or not user has consented to the use of cookies. The cookie is used to store the user consent for the cookies in the category 'Performance'. This cookie is set by GDPR Cookie Consent plugin. The cookie is used to store the user consent for the cookies in the category 'Other. The cookies is used to store the user consent for the cookies in the category 'Necessary'. The cookie is set by GDPR cookie consent to record the user consent for the cookies in the category 'Functional'. The cookie is used to store the user consent for the cookies in the category 'Analytics'. These cookies ensure basic functionalities and security features of the website, anonymously. Necessary cookies are absolutely essential for the website to function properly. Long-listed for the Man Asia Award and short-listed for the Commonwealth Writer’s Prize, Island of a Thousand Mirrors relates the story of two families and their experiences during the many decades of the brutal Sri Lankan Civil War, as told by the eldest daughter of each family. Island of a Thousand Mirrors is her first novel. She emigrated to the United States in her early teens.

Nayomi Munaweera was born in Sri Lanka and grew up in Nigeria. Covering three quarters of a century of Sri Lanka’s past, this beautifully written novel combines harsh reality, love and tenderness with astonishing insight. This is a beguiling tale of three women swept up in the turbulence of an island’s history and whose fate is woven intricately together in war, migration, love, exile and belonging. Meanwhile, Saraswathi lives in the middle of the war-torn country struggling to be a teenager in a land that is anything but normal. The two children, Yasodhara and Lanka adapt to their new life quickly, but memories of their childhood on a tropical island in the middle of the Indian Ocean is seared into their soul. A masterful, incendiary debut – Janet Fitch author of White Oleander.Ī few months after the 1983 riots, a Sinhalese family leaves Sri Lanka for America.

In Island of a Thousand Mirrors, Nayomi Munaweera writes with ferocity, fire and poetry of the incomprehensible madness of civil war and its effects upon those caught within it, whether in the villages and cities of Sri Lanka, or half a world away.

Island of 1000 mirrors