In My Mother's House: Civil War in Sri Lanka

Most ethnographies, even those concerning Sri Lanka's long-running civil war, do not begin with a murder. Even fewer start with an account of the murder of the author's mother. Sharika Thiranagama's monograph does, and its exceptional beginning leads to an exceptional book. Thiranagama's mother, Ranjini Thiranagama, was a pioneering human rights activist in Jaffna who dared to criticize the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE), for which she paid with her life. Thiranagama actually portrayed her mother in reenactments in the 2005 documentary film, No More Tears Sister, and In My Mother's House expertly builds upon her mother's legacy. This ethnography is not only one of the finest recent books on Sri Lanka, but will likely become a foundational text for future scholarly understandings of the island's civil war, alongside books by Stanley Tambiah, E. Valentine Daniel, and Jonathan Spencer. Unlike these works, this book is not centrally concerned...