Monsoon flooding in the Vanni in 2008. Photo: trokilinochchi / Flickr
Monsoon flooding in the Vanni in 2008. Photo: trokilinochchi / Flickr

'Vanni', a graphic history, highlights the human cost of Sri Lanka’s civil war

Elijah Hoole works in tech. He occasionally writes on Sri Lankan politics, society, and culture in Tamil and English.

Published on

The present world in which I am writing this review is vastly different to the one in which I began reading Vanni: A Family's Struggle Through the Sri Lankan Conflict – a graphic novel focused on the final stages of the Sri Lankan civil war and its devastating human cost.

I first opened this book many moons ago on a packed train to work in Colombo from the outskirts of the city. Within days, the government declared an all-island curfew. Fear of death gripped me as the number of local cases of COVID-19 mounted. I abandoned my sister, who is a doctor, and sought the relative safety of my aunt's house to reduce my probability of contracting the virus. In my paranoia, I even contemplated stocking up on oxygen cylinders in the event that I became severely ill. I did not get around to writing the review for three months because (I felt) I was not in the right mental space to undertake the task.

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