In The Garden Secretly

Each story in this collection captures a defining moment in the life of the narrator caught in a time of violent change. In the title story set against the backdrop of the seventeen-year struggle between the state and the Tamil separatists an abandoned home in the war-torn north makes a young airman re-evaluate what he is doing. The great division between the north and the south of the island also underlies 'The Crossing' where a simple journey becomes a transition from one life to another for two travellers - a young student and an elderly woman. All the other stories in the collection also delicately explore the legacies of war the mistrust the insecurity the fear and the fragmentation. Written with great sensitivity and lyricism this collection is a moving human record of the recent tragic history of the island-nation.