Civil War Stories: Funny Boy and The Island of Missing Trees

The last week or two here’s been a bit of a post colonial civil war theme running through my reading and watching

Funny boy

Streaming on Netflix, this 2020 film is a coming of  age story for a Tamil boy in post colonial Sri Lanka during the civil war. and based on the novel by Shyam Selvadurai (now on my reading list!).  Arjie is already a boy who doesn’t fit and as the tensions begin to mount between the Singhalese and Tamils, he finds that more than one of his identities are under attack.  Played by two actors and jumping back and forward between the boy and young man this is both a sweet story about a boy finding out who he is alongside a pretty brutal story about bigotry, hatred and violence.  Shocking statistic at the final credits that over 1 million Tamils became refugees during this period. Definitely worth a watch. 

The Island of Missing Trees by Elif Shafak

Another story about a civil war, dealing with love and loss, but this time in novel form, in post colonial Cyprus.  A pair of lovers from across the divide carry us through the whole novel and through them we meet their families and friends all affected by the war in different ways.  There are two other narratives that complete the picture firstly Ada, their daughter, brought up in the UK but dealing with the aftermath of the war just the same, and then the story of a fig tree brought to England from Cyprus, in love with, and loved and cared for by Kostas, Ada’s father. 

The trees and the natural world have a significant role in the novel, the missing trees as a metaphor for people, but also showing the damage done by human activity, war, and climate change. Real facts such as the mass death of bats and babies during the Cyprus war are used to make similar, powerful points, mixed with Cypriot myths, superstitions and traditions. In Kostas though we get to see the nurturing and caring side of humanity. And  I loved the descriptions of the butterflies, showing a kind of hope and toughness over generations despite their individual fragility. Coincidentally, butterflies served a similar purpose in Glory, my read from last week.

The Island of Missing Trees is a really lovely read which isn’t perfect (see the spoiler paragraph* at the bottom of the page) but does a great job of bringing awful facts to life through myth, metaphor and a touch of magical realism.  The beautifully written prose juxtaposes horror with beauty and shows empathy for the smallest in the natural world as well as the humans.  A satisfying reading experience on every level, and highly recommended.

So a lot of art about conflict between communities in the past few weeks, all bringing the spotlight in slightly different ways, and notably all ex-British colonies...  Glory saw us in the thick of the battles of ideologies and politics and making change at home.  Funny Boy took a close look at the personal impacts of hatred and bigotry, ending with escape to the UK as a happy ending bringing personal freedom. The Island of Missing Trees takes a much longer and wider view of the impacts at individual levels but also highlighting the ripples that last through generations.  It would be great not to have these real world events that cause such misery, but the art that comes out of it is impressive.  There’s a whole library to be written about what might happen to art if there was no misery in the world but I’ll leave that to another day! 

*This paragraph has a spoiler so stop here if you haven’t read the book.  I do have one gripe. I loved this book all the way through until the final chapter. I’m not sure why,  but I found it more satisfying and believable having a tree as a narrator falling in love with a human, than I did having it inhabited by a human spirit. The tree as a metaphor was sufficient without being an actual person.