37 pages • 1 hour read
Nayomi MunaweeraIsland of a Thousand Mirrors
Fiction | Novel | Adult | Published in 2012A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
Part 2, Chapter 11-EpilogueChapter Summaries & Analyses
Part 2, Chapter 11 Summary
Yasodhara arrives in Sri Lanka and is reunited with Lanka and Shiva. Saraswathi’s voice quickly interrupts Yasodhara’s narrative to offer a glimpse of her in Colombo as she prepares for her suicide bombing mission. Luxshmi is now in Tiger training camp too.
The narrative shifts back to Yasodhara’s perspective as Shiva recounts his escape from Sri Lanka. Yasodhara is overcome by the “sheer panic of loneliness” when, after an evening of catching up, Lanka and Shiva head to their bedroom together hand in hand (201).
Yasodhara accompanies Lanka as she teaches art classes in Colombo. They visit the markets and cook together before Saraswathi’s narration again interrupts Yasodhara’s voice. Saraswathi briefly outlines the details of her mission before Yasodhara resumes her narrative.
Yasodhara visits her aunt Mala, who has adopted the Tamil girl who was once her servant, finally becoming the mother she always wanted to be. Yasodhara falls into a daily pattern living with Lanka and Shiva. The trio enjoy a blissful reunion period in Colombo and the sites of their youth; the fighting of the civil war seems far away. Siddharth calls to beg Yasodhara to return, and she considers divorcing him. After finally having a moment alone with Shiva, and hearing Shiva confirm that he is in love with Lanka, Yasodhara reconsiders and resolves to return to her husband. She decides not to tell Lanka about her plans just yet, fearing that Lanka will not understand her choice.
Saraswathi’s voice closes the chapter as she prepares for her suicide mission. She is disguised as a pregnant woman, a bomb hidden beneath the “bright orange cloth hugging her belly” (211).
Part 2, Chapter 12 Summary
After three months in Colombo, Yasodhara prepares to return home to her husband. Before she tells Lanka and Shiva of her plans, though, she cooks a final meal in their shared kitchen in hopes of easing the news.
As Yasodhara prepares a home-cooked meal, Saraswathi boards a bus, fully equipped to detonate the bomb strapped to her body when she reaches her target. When soldiers board the bus, though, Saraswathi experiences flashbacks of when she was raped. In her panic, Saraswathi detonates her bomb on the bus before reaching her intended target.
Yasodhara is cooking when she hears news on the radio of the bus bombing in Central Colombo. She immediately runs toward the scene of the bombing and encounters Shiva on the way. The two search for Lanka near the scene of the bombing, and Yasodhara sees Saraswathi’s head upon the ground, a “vanquished Medusa, death dealer, serial killer” (219).
Lanka is nowhere to be found at the scene. Yasodhara arrives at the police station where families are identifying bodies of the bomb victims. She lets out a “sound of pure and absolute anguish” when she sees Lanka’s face among “the ripped-apart pieces of children” (222), confirming that Lanka is among Saraswathi’s victims.
Epilogue Summary
After Lanka’s death, Yasodhara and Shiva flee to San Francisco, where they begin a new life together, cutting all ties to the island and their families. They have a daughter and name her Samudhra. She is a girl “named for the ocean she has never seen” (227), and she loves to paint like her aunt Lanka did. She is “both American and Sri Lankan [...] also Tamil and Sinhala” (233). When the civil war finally ends, Yasodhara imagines someday taking her daughter to Sri Lanka. She imagines her daughter experiencing the beauty of the island as “a child of peace” with no attachment to the violence that came before (237).
Part 2, Chapter 11-Epilogue Analysis
Chapter 11 is the first time the two narrators’ voices become intertwined, their narratives getting closer to colliding as the novel reaches its climax. Recurring narrative shifts increase suspense and contribute to the feeling that the rising action is becoming more chaotic. The climax takes place in Chapter 12, when Saraswathi kills both herself and Lanka, bringing the two narratives violently together. Despite constantly feeling that the war is so far away, Yasodhara cannot escape the trajectory set before her by generations of ethnic tension and a cycle of violent retributions.
Structurally, Saraswathi’s narrative interrupts Yasodhara’s voice in Chapter 11. This foreshadows the larger and more tragic disruption Saraswathi causes when she detonates her bomb. Saraswathi’s voice is also significant in its insistence: Yasodhara cannot simply turn a blind eye to what is going on around her, she cannot simply ignore the voices of the Tamil people, and neither can the reader. The experience of the Tamil people, although the minority in the region, is a critical factor in the ongoing tensions surrounding the civil war. Yasodhara repeatedly escapes the harsh physical realities of war, but the recurrence of Saraswathi’s voice, paired with its increasing insistence and focus, warns readers that no side is above suffering in this conflict, and neither side can be ignored.
The Epilogue serves as the falling action and offers resolution for the vague identities and roles of the two lovers in the Prologue. After Lanka’s death, it is more acceptable for Yasodhara to sleep next to Shiva, but it is not until the Epilogue that readers gain this understanding of circumstances surrounding the three characters. Yasodhara originally tells readers that this is the story of her family, and possibly a parallel story of her island home, but it is also the story of how Yasodhara and Shiva finally come together to end multiple cycles that have repeated across ethnicities and generations on both sides of their families.
