In contrast to its natural beauty, Sri Lanka becomes increasingly violent and dangerous, although Yasodhara and her sister are relatively safer than their close friend and neighbor Shiva, who is a member of the minority Tamil population. Visaka marries Nishan despite still having feelings for her first crush, and Yasodhara and her younger sister Lanka are born into an educated and somewhat privileged realm of Sri Lankan society. Visaka also grows up in a family that values education, although her youthful escapades focus on a budding interethnic romance that ends in heartbreak. As a child, Nishan enjoys exploring the island’s untamed and unscathed natural beauty, but his mother Beatrice Muriel pushes him to focus on his studies as he grows older. The first narrator is Yasodhara Rajasinghe, who promises a story of her family and begins with the upbringing of her parents Nishan and Visaka. Part 1 covers Sri Lanka’s independence from Britain in 1948 through the beginning of the Sri Lankan Civil War in the 1980s. She reflects upon her sleeping partner who whispers her sister’s name. Readers should be warned that the novel includes graphic depictions of violence, including a first-person depiction of sexual assault and corresponding flashbacks.Ī brief Prologue opens the novel from the perspective of an unnamed female narrator.
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