Synopsis War. Excruciating pain. Identity crisis. Twelve short stories. The Dividing Line. Jean Arasanayagam's expiation of the testing times that Sri Lanka has been thrown into, torn apart by a long civil war. The stories are all woven in a realm of the somber and radiate an uneasy calm. She sketches an unnerving world where things fall apart - places, relationships, identities. Arasanayagam's voice is the voice of protest, her tone acerbic, her stories an archaeology of the oppressed. Yet in the midst of all carnage she yearns for a world where pain, malice and hatred find no place, a paradise in which love and peace reign supreme.Arasanayagam's stories emanate from within a distinctly perturbed mind over issues universal. A brilliant rendering of tired and tattered strings of familial bonding unable to cope with the uncertainty of the modern world. On the whole a superlative collection which delineates an atrophied world and its decrepitude.