Warzone tourism in Sri Lanka: tales of a darker place in paradise

An ethnographic study on internal travel analysed through the perspectives of Sinhala tourists going from the South to the war-ravaged North.

Warzone Tourism in Sri Lanka explores travellers’ narratives that reflect the experiences and interactions of those going to northern Sri Lanka, and argues that the discourses that emerge are not simply based on leisure and innocence of travel. Rather, they have much to do with the thirty-year civil war in Sri Lanka and how it has impacted the inter-ethnic relations in the country, creating two mutually antagonistic forms of nationalism—Tamil and  Sinhala.

This book is a significant contribution to academia in light of the disruption of civilian travel to northern Sri Lanka during the civil war, effectively barring face-to-face access between citizens, and the narratives which emerge from post-war travel, highlighting the resentment between the two main ethnic groups.