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. As a child, Nishan enjoys exploring the island’s untamed and unscathed natural beauty, but his mother Beatrice Muriel pushes him to focus on his studies as he grows older. Visaka also grows up in a family that values education, although her youthful escapades focus on a budding interethnic romance that ends in heartbreak. Visaka marries Nishan despite still having feelings for her first crush, and Yasodhara and her younger sister Lanka are born into an educated and somewhat privileged realm of Sri Lankan society.

In contrast to its natural beauty, Sri Lanka becomes increasingly violent and dangerous, although Yasodhara and her sister are relatively safer than their close friend and neighbor Shiva, who is a member of the minority Tamil population. After a mob murders their uncle for trying to protect a Tamil child, the violence moves closer to Yasodhara’s home until one night a mob demands that her family turn over their Tamil neighbors. Yasodhara’s immediate family—her parents and younger sister—flee the violence and emigrate to the United States, where they struggle to acclimate to American life.

Yasodhara and Lanka grow up in America, where they eventually attend college. Yasodhara discovers a love of literature, while Lanka discovers a love of art. The family continues to receive news from Sri Lanka regarding the escalating tensions and eventual civil war, but they are safe in America, and the war feels removed from their lived experience.

Meanwhile, Saraswathi, the second narrator, grows up in the war-torn northern region of Sri Lanka. She is from the Tamil minority and loses all three of her brothers to the war. Saraswathi’s dreams of becoming the next village school teacher shatter when Sinhala soldiers abduct and sexually assault her. The experience leaves her family ashamed of her, and she joins the guerilla organization Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam as a last resort. In her Tiger training Saraswathi becomes a vengeful killer. Her impossible dreams of becoming a teacher are replaced with dreams of becoming a suicide bomber.

Back in Los Angeles, Yasodhara agrees to an arranged marriage to Siddharth. The marriage falls apart when Yasodhara discovers Siddharth’s infidelity. She decides to go back to Sri Lanka to stay with Lanka, who returned to the island and is now romantically involved with their childhood friend Shiva. Just as Yasodhara prepares to go back to America to work through her marriage difficulties with her husband, Lanka is killed on a bus when Saraswathi detonates her suicide bomb. The tragedy of losing Lanka brings Yasodhara and Shiva together. They leave Sri Lanka and settle in San Francisco, where they have a daughter who reminds Yasodhara of her late sister Lanka. The Epilogue reveals Yasodhara as the narrator of the Prologue, tying together the sisters and their shared lover as Yasodhara pushes herself to move forward after such a devastating loss.