The Dividing Line

War. Excruciating pain. Identity crisis. Twelve short stories. The Dividing Line. Jean Arasanayagam’s expiation of the testing times that Sri Lanka has been thrown into, torn apart by a long civil war. The stories are all woven in a realm of the somber and radiate an uneasy calm. She sketches an unnerving world where things fall apart – places, relationships, identities. Arasanayagam’s voice is the voice of protest, her tone acerbic, her stories an archaeology of the oppressed. Yet in the midst of all carnage she yearns for a world where pain, malice and hatred find no place, a paradise in which love and peace reign supreme.Arasanayagam’s stories emanate from within a distinctly perturbed mind over issues universal. A brilliant rendering of tired and tattered strings of familial bonding unable to cope with the uncertainty of the modern world. On the whole a superlative collection which delineates an atrophied world and its decrepitude.