Still Counting the Dead: Survivors of Sri Lanka’s Hidden War

Frances Harrison

Granta

272  pages, Rs 399

In 2009, as decades of civil war between the Tamil Tiger guerrillas and the government reached its bloody climax, hundreds of thousands of schoolchildren, doctors, farmers, fishermen, nuns and other civilians were caught in the crossfire. And the government ensured, through a strict media blackout, that the world was unaware of their suffering. Now, a UN enquiry has called for an investigation of war-crimes, crimes that are recounted here for the wider world in sobering, shattering detail.