Island of a Thousand Mirrors

Nayomi Munaweera was born in Sri Lanka in 1973 as ethnic tensions on the island nation were rising. Island of a Thousand Mirrors (2012) is her first novel and a work of fiction built upon real events leading up to and during the Sri Lankan Civil War that lasted from 1983 to 2009. The story explores cyclical ethnic tension and the impacts of civil war from the perspectives of two female narrators, one from the island’s Sinhala majority population and one from the minority Tamil population. The novel was nominated for several international literary awards and won the Commonwealth Regional Prize for Asia (2013). This summary is based on the St. Martin’s Griffin edition published in 2016.

Readers should be warned that the novel includes graphic depictions of violence, including a first-person depiction of sexual assault and corresponding flashbacks.

Plot Summary

A brief Prologue opens the novel from the perspective of an unnamed female narrator. She reflects upon her sleeping partner who whispers her sister’s name.

Part 1 covers Sri Lanka’s independence from Britain in 1948 through the beginning of the Sri Lankan Civil War in the 1980s. The first narrator is Yasodhara Rajasinghe, who promises a story of her family and begins with the upbringing of her parents Nishan and Visaka.