[REVIEW] Island of a Thousand Mirrors, by Nayomi Munaweera

256 pages, $24.99

Review by Michelle Newby

“Behind the retreating Englishman, on the new nation’s flag is poised a stylized lion, all curving flank and ornate muscle, a long, cruel sword gripped in its front paw. It is the ancient symbol of the Sinhala…A green stripe represents that small and much-tossed Muslim population. An orange stripe represents the larger Tamil minority…But in the decades that are coming, race riots and discrimination will render the orange stripe inadequate. It will be replaced by a new flag. On its face, a snarling tiger, all bared fang and bristling whisker…A rifle toting tiger. A sword gripping lion. This is a war that will be waged between related beasts.”

The politics of the Sri Lankan civil war are rendered not just personal but intimate as the Buddhist Sinhala (the ancestral dominant caste) and Hindu Tamil battle for the island nation in Nayomi Munaweera’s stunning debut novel, Island of a Thousand Mirrors. Reduced economic circumstances force the Sinhala Ranasinghe family to rent the upper floor of their home to the Tamil Shivalingam family. As conditions in the country deteriorate precipitously and the war invades both families, they are forced to flee the island.

The women of Island of a Thousand Mirrors are fully-realized, complex and complete characters. When the teenage Ranasinghe sisters land in Los Angeles they “learn the lesson of our inadequacies.” Munaweera powerfully conveys the dislocation in ways both large and small. Avocadoes made into guacamole instead of mashed with condensed milk? “…repulsed, [we] spit it out, the difference between what our tongues expect and what we are tasting impossible to reconcile.” They learn that the American suburban family lawn’s shade of green “…indicat[es] all manner of propriety and belonging.” Their father, a university educated engineer working as a parking lot attendant, “…has contracted the recent immigrant’s fever…He wants to conquer this new country. Make it recognize his talents, his abilities, make it see him.”

One of the most remarkable facets to this novel is that we also get to see the conflict from the other side, the side of the rebels, of the “terrorists.” And our ambassador from the Tigers is a woman. Saraswathi is sixteen and has known nothing other than war; she has lost two brothers to it already. We get to follow her trajectory, imagine and understand how she becomes one of their fiercest fighters, how the Sri Lankan government soldiers create a rebel. “They should have killed me, but they didn’t and this is their mistake.” It is heartbreaking and shocking to witness but the transformation is, of course, unavoidable. When the Ranasinghe sisters finally return to Sri Lanka, they and Saraswathi are on a collision course.

Munaweera’s imagery and her powers of description immerse you in Sri Lanka, in the fishing villages and the steaming capitol of Colombo; you can feel the humidity bead on your skin, hear the crash and roll of the sea, taste the curries. You will also see the broken bodies and smell the burning rubber stench of riot and flesh set ablaze. A description of the sea: “…the ocean tugs at his toes, wraps sinuous limbs about his own and pulls him into its embrace…Eyes open against stinging salt, he sees coral like a crowded, crumbling city, busy with variously marked, spotted, dotted, striped, lit, pompous and playful sea creatures.”

Munaweera is often wryly funny with a sly humor in phrases such as, “…marital disappointment has bred maternal ambition…” On the topic of marriage: “A love marriage [accompanied by palm smacking forehead]…love marriages border on the indecent. They signify a breakdown of propriety, a giving in to the base instincts exhibited by the lower castes and foreigners.” An old man explains to the children how the Tamils want to force them off the island, to “swim for their lives…The children listen, their eyes big. They had not realized that the Tamil children they go to school with harbored such insidious and watery intentions.”

The plot is simple, allowing the imagery and characterization to shine, but engrossing. The rhythmically paced story begins rapidly cycling between points of view as the climax approaches – a very effective technique – which builds the suspense to an unnerving level. And then the keening: “A sound to make the war-makers quake and flee like the ancient demons, taking with them their weapons, their landmines, their silver tongued rhetoric, their nationalism, their martyrs and sacred Buddhist doctrines, the whole pile of stinking bullshit.” Island of a Thousand Mirrors will stick with you long after you’ve read the last page; it will inspire you to flip to the international section of your newspaper, and it drives home the point that there are two sides to every conflict and most of the moral distinctions we make are saturated in shades of gray.

***

Michelle Newby is a contributing editor at Lone Star Literary Life, reviewer for Foreword Reviews, and blogger at TexasBookLover. A member of the National Book Critics Circle, her reviews appear in Pleiades, Bookslut, World Literature Today, Rain Taxi, Concho River Review, The Collagist, Monkeybicycle, Mosaic Literary Magazine, and Atticus Review.