Literary Engagements with the Politics of Peace

Responsibility. Being based in the UK but working within a field that might be delineated as Sri Lankan studies, I have thought a lot about that word recently. What responsibilities impress themselves upon the writer/researcher who works on/in Sri Lanka? Do these vary according to whether one is outside or inside its borders? As an ‘outsider’, how should one responsibly speak to the question of politics? Qadri Ismail’s absorbing and provocative book Abiding by Sri Lanka, tackles these and many more questions as it formulates its own attempt to speak to the question of peace and politics in Sri Lanka. Ismail is a Sri Lankan born, North American trained English Professor now domiciled in the US. Abiding by Sri Lanka makes a series of postcolonial, critical theoretical and ‘leftist’ literary engagements with the politics of peace in the Sri Lankan context.