Premarasa was born in London and has a Tamil Sri Lankan cultural background. It is difficult to read her works without reference to that country and in particular the Sri Lankan civil war which regularly flared between 1983 to 2009. The complexities of that conflict are largely unknown outside Sri Lanka and its diasporic communities although the last phase of it from 2009 finally reached international attention. That phase was particularly brutal; UN documents and other sources estimate that up to 70,000 Tamil civilians were indiscriminately killed as the Government launched a massive military offensive aimed at wiping out the separatist organisation, the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam  (LTTE) seemingly regardless of civilian casualties. 

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