Understanding the Conflict

In My Mother’s House is certainly not yet another book on the civil war in Sri Lanka. The book stands out on three key grounds. One, despite being one of the victims of war and becoming a refugee at a young age, the author, Sharika Thiranagama, does not build a narrative of herself, but of others in the society that she had left more than two decades ago. It is also balanced. Two, though the book deals with Sri Lanka’s civil war in the larger context, it is about war itself as ‘a social condition’ that is less explored in the Sri Lankan case. Three, as observed by noted author Gananath Obeysekere, in the ‘Foreword’ to the book, it is an ‘elegantly written, jargon free work on the ethnic conflict in Sri Lanka’ and it is ‘the most significant contribution written to date for understanding that conflict.’ On reading the book, it is impossible to disagree with Professor Obeysekere.