This collection contains nineteen stories of rare power from the heart of war-ravaged Sri Lanka. In these stories Jean Arasanayagam brings us voices that are not normally heard: those of anonymous men and women searching for order and reason in the midst of a ruthless civil war: a young Sinhala man turns his back on an aimless upper-class existence and joins a group of Tamil refugees smuggling themselves into Germany; a woman goes out alone to a scene of carnage to try to find her daughter's lover among the dead; a maid returns from the rich desert city of Doha to the green half-jungle of her village in northern Sri Lanka and rediscovers hapiness despite the uncertain future.