Roma Tearne's voice trembles with indignation. "I keep being sent YouTube clips showing the most terrible things," she says. "In one a 26-year-old disabled Tamil man is being beaten to death by the army and his body thrown into the sea. Who says the war is over?"
While much of the world merely noted in passing the recent defeat of the LTTE - the Tamil Tigers - and the election victory of President Rajapaksa's coalition, the Sri Lankan-born but British-based painter and author remains galvanised by the island's descent into fascism.
I met Tearne just before the publication of her fourth novel,
The Swimmer. It centres on the murder of a Tamil refugee by the police and like her previous three (
Mosquito, Bone China and
Brixton Beach) her new work is informed by the terrible events of Sri Lanka's civil war, although it is mainly set in Britain.
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