In Nayomi Munaweera's novel, a Sri Lankan girl on her way to school is stopped by a mob of knife-wielding men who ask her to prove that she isn’t Tamil. If she cannot then she is dead. It is a cruel reminder of Hindu-Muslim riots; a Hindu woman extending her life by showing the red dot on her forehead, a Muslim man killed on the spot for not owning that extra layer of skin around his organ. It is the curse of the civil war.

The fear subsides slowly, but not the humiliation. Both sides are affected and it is a challenge to be able to write with equal empathy; not submitting easily to the moral compulsion of sticking to good not evil, the victim not the victor – binaries we are conditioned to take refuge in when conflicted.

Historically, the Sinhalese butchered the Tamils and the Tamils, through the LTTE, sent suicide bombers to take revenge on innocent citizens. “Spanning four generations of a Sinhalese family, Munaweera’s novel which, one imagines, draws from her own family history, tries to do justice to the full complexity of this past. Yet, faced with one’s historical enemy, even the noblest souls become susceptible to blind prejudice. It’s a formidable ambition, and Munaweera grapples with it gracefully,” said Somak Ghoshal in Mint.

Yasodhara's and her siblings’ lives are shaped more by teenage love than the differences between the Tamil and Sinhala people. Soon, however, the cloud bursts and their peace is shattered by the tragic war. But Yasodhara’s life is joined with Saraswathie’s, a Tamil girl who has dreams of becoming a teacher but is arrested by a group of Sinhala soldiers and pulled deep into the conflict.

Island of a Thousand Mirrors is the voice of the two women first thrown apart and then brought together by the war. It won the Commonwealth Writers’ prize and was nominated for the Man Asian Literary Prize as well as the DSC Prize for South Asian Literature.

Published in 2014.