Then There Were No Witnesses

Since the 1980s, Tamil poetry from Sri Lanka, taking a new turn to reflect the troubles in the country, has served as a counter-memory, a witness for, torture, loss, trauma and exile. Ahilan gives us a unique voice and style, in which he expresses the violence in Northern and Eastern Sri Lanka with great nuance and subtlety. His background as art historian has allowed him to blend the two- thousand-year-old Tamil cultural, literary and philosophic tradition with visual, graphic imagery to create a rich and distinct body of poetry.