The Teardrop Island

December 1, 2014
Ideally, a survey of Sri Lanka in the aftermath of its 26-year-long civil war, which ended in 2009, would be penned by a native Sri Lankan or at least a seasoned international journalist or travel writer. Instead, plucky British expat Briggs, who landed in Colombo in 2010 to teach biology to Sri Lankan teenagers, has stepped into the breach. Inspired by the Ceylon travels recounted in the mid-1800s by Irishman James Emerson Tennent, Briggs not only touches on Sri Lanka's deep and colorful history but also details her modern-day encounters with people and street scenes, venturing from the island's south coast to the capital city of Colombo and all the way to its war-torn northern and eastern coasts, where travel has been severely restricted by the Sri Lankan army. Imperfect for its sometimes pedestrian prose and for Briggs' limited time in the country, this is still a quite serviceable portrait of a nation regaining its bearings even as its people struggle with poverty, dislocation, and Sinhalese-Tamil resentments left unresolved at war's end.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2014, American Library Association.)