August Sun

One strength of this often affecting triptych of Sri Lankan tales lies in its willingness to adopt different perspectives on the recent civil war and the variously brutalised participants, including a soldier on a brothel visit who encounters his sister working its busy rooms; a refugee boy forced to abandon his beloved dog; and an articulate urbanite searching, with a journalist's help, for her captured pilot husband. Much attention is paid to the dislocation wrought by war, both material and psychological. Aptly, there's a general absence of complete closure in the narratives, just as there are rarely treaties signed, or even ceasefires, in the hearts and minds of those touched by such conflicts.