Lost Evenings, Lost Lives

In May 2009, the Sri Lankan government officially announced the end of a civil war that had been ravaging the island for almost three decades. During all these years, Tamil poets have commented on the war and its vicissitudes in what constitutes an extraordinary body of poetry. We find poems on violence and trauma, loss and exile, as well as courage and hope. Together these poems can be read as an alternative history of the war.

This collection, translated from the original Tamil, comes with an afterword that will provide readers with the historical and political context of Sri Lanka's war, while also mapping literary developments during that period.