摘要: Although Lokugé's stories have appeared in several journals and magazines, she has published just two books thus far. Moth and Other Stories (1992) is a small book, comprising 101 pages. But the eleven stories that constitute the collection deal with serious concerns pertaining to Sri Lanka.No Sri Lankan novel or collection of stories published after 1983 can avoid dealing with the relationship between the Sinhalese and the Tamils." Non-Incident," a story that is not particularly convincing, demonstrates how a Tamil tea plucker is victimized because of her community and class. More effective is" A Pair of Birds" in which the author focuses on the way that the anti-Tamil riots in the south of Sri Lanka and the killing of (mostly Sinhala) service personnel in the north severely test long-standing intercommunal friendships." The Man Within," for its part, shows how Tamil terrorists try to coerce a Sinhalese to plant a bomb in the building in which he works. Many of the stories in this collection are concerned with victimization, especially the victimization of women. The last story in the collection, which analyzes expatriate issues, is, as it were, an introduction to Lokugé's novel that appeared eight years later. Ramya leaves for Australia, which is a haven to the extent that she can" drink in the peace”(94), after her brother, a doctor, was brutally murdered by terrorists for daring to report for work despite their orders to the contrary. Yet her reverie on which the story is built eventually makes her realize that she is an alien in Australia; consequently, she longs for" the time when she belonged to the island in the sun that knew no winters"(98).