Reduced economic circumstances force the Ranasinghe family to rent out the upper floor of their home to the Shivalingam family. Her vivid imagery readily evokes everything that is quintessentially Lanka and immerses you effortlessly into the story and its characters, holding you captive until the very end. The plot of Island of a Thousand Mirrors may seem simple, but it is one that lets Munaweera’s fluid, descriptive writing style shine through. It also won a Godage Prize giving it local recognition and validation and it was a Target Book Club selection in America.Īs you may imagine, the novel’s critical as well as commercial success brought Munaweera instant recognition as a writer and catapulted her into the category of writers to watch out for.

It won the Commonwealth Regional Prize for Asia. It was short-listed for the DSC Prize and the Northern California Book Prize. Fictionalised accounts make one wonder whether the “other” is really that different from us.įilled with lush sensual imagery, Nayomi Munaweera’s debut novel, Island of a Thousand Mirrors, is one such book and was deservedly long-listed for the Man Asia Literary Prize and the Dublin IMPAC Prize. Reading these stories is often a cathartic experience that helps one come to terms with the effects of communal violence to understand how someone who was once close friends with you can suddenly turn against you. In a global context, people still write extensively about the Second World War, and analogously, in a local context, it is equally normal for Lankan writers to set their stories within the backdrop of the Sri Lankan civil war. For years to follow, it is quite natural for people to write stories about events that traumatised them.

The island of a thousand mirrors