In a Time of Burning

This collection brings together some of the finest poetry written over more than three decades by Cheran, one of the best known of Sri Lankan Tamil poets today. His poetry charts the narrative of the ethnic conflict and civil war in Sri Lanka, bearing witness to the horrors and atrocities suffered daily by the Tamil people during these years, and their continued suffering and mourning now. The narrative gains poignancy because it is set against a landscape which was once idyllic, and is now devastated. Threading through the war narrative are love poems which are shadowed by uncertainty and the threat of separation and loss. Th poems move from the well-known sea-scapes of the village of Alaveddy where Cheran was born, to the experience of diaspora in Europe and Canada, and return finally, to reflect on a land and its people left wounded and unhealed.