Preventing Erasure and Seeking Accountability in Sri Lankan Diasporic Fiction

ABSTRACT Sixteen years after the end of the military conflict in Sri Lanka in 2009, there has been no real accountability for the atrocities that took place during the 26‐year war between the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) and the Sri Lankan state. Shankari Chandran's Chai Time at Cinnamon Gardens and V. V. Ganeshananthan's Brotherless Night examine the complexities of the conflict. Chandran shows the congruence between the anti‐democratic political impulses that drove the Sri Lankan ethnic conflict and those driving the rise of anti‐immigrant parties in Australia. Ganeshananthan offers a nuanced depiction of the way in which Sri Lankan Tamils responded to oppression by the state, the LTTE and the Indian Peace Keeping Force (IPKF). Both these works examine aspects of Sri Lanka's recent history that the state and other interested parties have tried to elide, particularly the culture of impunity in Sri Lanka, and underscore the importance of storytelling.