Antonythasan Jesuthasan, noise and sulfur – Liberation

Roman

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–The youth of a Tamil Tigress by the actor of “Dheepan”.–

A short life tossed about in the chaos of war and terrorism. Here is Ala, a “to be of brimstone, noise and fires” born in 1989 in the Tamil north of Sri Lanka. The little girl is born into a world of mantra and sorcery, poetry and worry. In the middle of the serpent gods, descendants of the Nagas tribes, hunters. At the gates of the dense jungle, where a thorny vine makes the blood bead, where loved ones and friends disappear.

There, live the combatants, not far from the militiamen, in a bloody camera. Until she was 15, Ala was an innocent spectator of the civil war that was tearing Sri Lanka apart. On the one hand the Sinhalese government, mainly composed of majority and conquering Buddhists. On the other, the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) who took the Tamils, the Hindu and Christian minority on the island, hostage. The plump and charismatic Velupillai Prabhakaran is at the head of the Tigers, in a savage fight against the violent colonization of the “children of famine”, landless peasants, Sinhalese. Soon the troops in Colombo will crush the LTTE in a dreadful bloodbath.

Childhood never lasts very long in the clash of arms and the shadow of massacres. Ala’s brother is found one morning, beheaded. Threatened, the family flees. Despite herself, Ala rocks. Ala-the tern, “this bird capable of flying far”, understand that the “demons recoil before iron”, a firearm for a companion…

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