Buddhist Ritual Cultures in Contemporary Southeast Asia and Sri Lanka by John Clifford Holt, University of Hawai’i Press 408pp. March 2017 Cloth – Price: $68.00 ISBN: 978-0-8248-6780-5 Theravada Traditions offers a unique comparative approach to understanding Buddhism: it examines popular rituals of central importance in the predominantly Theravada Buddhist cultures of Laos, Sri Lanka, Thailand, Myanmar, and Cambodia…. Read more »
Posts Categorized: Book Reviews
Tamil: A Biography
HARDCOVER $35.00 • £25.00 • €31.50 ISBN 9780674059924 Publication: September 2016 The Belknap Press of the Harvard University Press Spoken by eighty million people in South Asia and a diaspora that stretches across the globe, Tamil is one of the great world languages, and one of the few ancient languages that survives as a mother… Read more »
Former Diplomat Admits India’s Role in Sri Lankan Communal War
by Vijith Samarasinghe, World Socialist Website, February 10, 2017 A recent book by retired Indian diplomat Shivashankar Menon reveals New Delhi’s backing for the Colombo government during the final stage of the war against separatist Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE). Menon, a former foreign secretary and national security advisor to Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh,… Read more »
How the US Helped Destroy LTTE Floating Armories
by P.K. Balachandran, ‘The Indian Express,’ February 10, 2017 Ex-Sri Lankan navy chief Colombage narrates how the US helped destroy LTTE floating armories COLOMBO: Former Sri Lankan navy chief Adm. Jayanath Colombage has, in his recently published book Asymmetric Warfare At Sea: The Case of Sri Lanka, described how the United States helped the Sri Lankan navy destroy the LTTE’s… Read more »
Review of ‘Nothing Ever Dies’
“All wars are fought twice,” he writes, “the first time on the battlefield, the second time in memory.” —————– Nothing Ever Dies Read an excerpt from Viet Thanh Nguyen’s new book about Vietnam and the memory of war By Stephanie Bastek, ‘American Scholar,’ April 12, 2016 The Vietnam War—or, as those on the other side… Read more »
The Enlightened Theology of a Tamil Saivite
by Karthick Ram Manoharan, ‘The Wire,’ India, December 22, 2016 In Religion, Caste and Nation in South India, V. Ravi Vaithees focuses on the works of the Tamil Saivite saint Maraimalai Adigal and explores the religious roots of the Dravidian movement and its impact on the political discourse. This year has been a calamitous one… Read more »
The History of the Kingdom of Jaffna
Jaffna – Yalpanavaiyaka Maalai Translated from the Tamil by C. Brito, 1879 Also available at Noolaham
An English Biography on Jayalalitha by Vaasanthi
by Sachi Sri Kantha Book Review: Amma – Jayalalithaa’s Journey from Movie Star to Political Queen, by Vaasanthi, Juggernaut Books, New Delhi, 2016, 175 pages. At last, a short English biography on actress-politician Jayalalitha, the current Chief Minister of Tamil Nadu, India, had appeared. The author Vaasanthi, is a noted Tamil woman novelist. Despite the… Read more »
Oral History: ‘Through the Generations’
by Race on the Agenda, London, 2012 In January 2012, Race on the Agenda (ROTA) was awarded a grant by the Heritage Lottery Fund to collect oral histories of Sri Lankan Tamils in London. Book available for download at http://tamilgenerations.rota.org.uk/book/
Noolaham Book Collection
நூலகம் Impressive list of books [5579 and growing] and other publications originating from Eelam Tamils. Provides knowledge and information services to ensure free and open access thereby support educational, research and development endeavors related to Sri Lankan Tamil speaking communities. Books [5,579] Magazines [7,421] Newspapers [3,941] Pamphlet [1,880] http://www.noolaham.org Project Madurai Electronic versions of ancient… Read more »
Nothing Can Be Done
V. V. Ganeshananthan interviews Anuk Arudpragasam, ‘LA Review of Books,’ October 6, 2016 IN HIS DEBUT NOVEL, The Story of a Brief Marriage, Anuk Arudpragasam achieves something remarkable: he shows us a consciousness reshaped by the possibility of imminent death. How do we inhabit the body when we think we may be leaving it behind?… Read more »
Why International Law Still Matters
Sands allows his extraordinary book to revolve around a simple question: Do we need the crime of genocide? Does the category add anything to the power and effectiveness of crimes against humanity? “The term ‘genocide,’ with its focus on the group,” Sands writes, “tends to heighten a sense of ‘them’ and ‘us,’ burnishes feelings of… Read more »
Making and Unmaking Nations
by Scott Straus, Cornell University Press, 2016 In Making and Unmaking Nations, Scott Straus seeks to explain why and how genocide takes place—and, perhaps more important, how it has been avoided in places where it may have seemed likely or even inevitable. To solve that puzzle, he examines postcolonial Africa, analyzing countries in which genocide… Read more »
Bishop Rayappu Joseph: ‘A Living Hero’
Biography describes the bishop’s efforts to stand up for the rights of the Tamil people by UCA News, Bangkok, September 5, 2016 A biography about the challenges faced by a Catholic bishop who played a major role in assisting Tamil people during Sri Lanka’s civil war was launched Sept. 1. Written by Oblate Father David… Read more »
Road to Nandikadal
by Shanika Sriyananda, ‘Daily FT,’ Colombo, September 6, 2016 Battle-hardened soldier Maj. Gen. Kamal Gunaratne, who has shed his Army uniform which he wore for 35 years, yesterday urged political leaders of the country to maintain the hard-earned peace. Maj. Gen. Gunaratne, who is credited for commanding his troops of the 53 Division to fight the… Read more »
The Story of a Brief Marriage
by Anuk Arudpragasam, to be published September 6, 2016 from ‘The Wall Street Journal,’ 10 Books to Read This Fall, September 1, 2016 This debut novel begins with a gut-wrenching scene, in which a 6-year-old child has his arm amputated. Other striking moments, all calmly told in meticulous detail, follow: a woman compulsively eating sand,… Read more »
Lost Evenings, Lost Lives
by Charles Sarvan, ‘Colombo Telegraph,’ August 25, 2016 This bilingual anthology of fifty poems is by the very nature of its subject (ethnic conflict) political, and yet it would be inaccurate and unfortunate to describe the volume as a political work. It is about the experience of politics: politics as experienced not by the makers… Read more »
Being a Christian in Sri Lanka
Historical, Political, Social, and Religious Considerations – Book by Leonard Pinto Reviewed by Basil Fernando, ‘diasporaasianvoices,’ July 29, 2016 Being a Christian in Sri Lanka is a book with a striking cover, showing the view from theSigiriya Rock Fortress (built 477 – 495 AD, a UNESCO World Heritage Site). Leonard Pinto, an ecologist and an… Read more »
The Other Tamils of Sri Lanka
by V. Suryanarayan, ‘The Book Review India,’ March 2016 CLASS, PATRIARCHY AND ETHNICITY ON SRI LANKAN PLANTATIONS: TWO CENTURIES OF POWER AND PROTEST By Kumari Jayawardena and Rachel Kurian Orient BlackSwan, Hyderabad, 2015, pp. 364, Rs. 825.00 VOLUME XL NUMBER 3 March 2016 The book traces two centuries old history of plantations in Sri Lanka… Read more »
Stop Mutual Recrimination, Address Root Causes of the Ethnic Conflict
By PK Balachandran, ‘The Indian Express,’ August 13, 2016 COLOMBO: Rathika Pathmanathan, a former combatant of the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE), urges fellow Sri Lankans divided by a 30 year ethnic conflict, to stop “accusing and punishing each other, and begin addressing the root causes of the conflict” so that Sinhalese and Tamils… Read more »