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Graphic Medicine
Vanni: A Family's Struggle Through the Sri Lankan Conflict
In the tradition of Maus , Persepolis , Palestine , and The Breadwinner , Vanni is a graphic novel documenting the human side of the conflict between the Sri Lankan government and the “Tamil Tigers.” Told from the perspective of a single family, it takes readers through the otherwise unimaginable struggles, horrors, and life-changing decisions families and individuals are forced to make when caught up in someone else’s war. Set in Vanni, the northern region of Sri Lanka that was devastated by the civil war, this graphic novel follows the Ramachandran family as they flee their home after the 2004 tsunami and move from one displacement camp to the next, seeking an ever-elusive safe haven and struggling to keep each other alive. Inspired by Benjamin Dix’s experience working in Sri Lanka for the United Nations during the war, Vanni draws on more than four years of meticulous research, official reports, and first-hand interviews with refugees. It depicts heroic acts of kindness and horrific acts of violence, memorializing the experiences of the Tamil civilians against the forces that seek to erase their memory. Elegantly drawn by Lindsay Pollock, this exceptionally moving graphic novel portrays the personal experiences of modern warfare, the process of forced migration, and the struggles of seeking asylum in Europe.
268 pages, Paperback
Published October 1, 2019
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 37 reviews
October 31, 2019
There are funny nonfiction graphic novel-memoirs – Notes on a Thesis, Trashed, Can’t we Talk about Something More Pleasant? – and there are mopey nonfiction graphic novel-memoirs (Are You my Mother?, Blankets, The Poor Bastard) and there are black-hole-grim nonfiction graphic novel-memoirs (Maus, Footnotes in Gaza, Our Cancer Year).
Vanni is the black-hole grim type.
It starts with life in a little seaside village in Sri Lanka, everyone pottering around, fishing and cooking and gossiping, but on page 41 :
It’s a wave – Aiyo, it’s a huge wave!
Yes, it’s the tsunami.
Then, three years later, on page 80:
You all need to be gone in an hour. Take the western road – waste no time! Don’t leave anyone behind!
It’s the civil war. The Tamil Tigers are clearing out villages and telling them all to leg it to a safer area. It turned out there wasn’t a safer area. We follow two families through the rest of the war, and we meet with all the things we have learned to expect in wartime – starvation, bombings of civilians by accident, bombings of civilians on purpose, panic, lost family members, conscription of family members, sudden death, misery, escape finally for the survivors, mental trauma.
This book is beautifully drawn by Lindsay Pollock. Five stars for the artwork.
(too small to give much of an idea - this is a large book)
The author Benjamin Dix is a Western guy who worked for the United Nations 2004-2008 and then did a PhD. He explained :
I interviewed hundreds of people whilst I worked in Vanni for 4 years (2004-2008) concerning the tsunami and then the war and displacement. I wrote my PhD in Anthropology on conflict and violence and the transformation of complex and traumatic testimonies and how to turn that into sequential art. The Vanni book was the foundation of my thesis. Lindsay and I then interviewed around 20 Tamil refugees in London, Zurich and Chennai. Due to security concerns of people’s identity we decided that we would amalgamate these interviews into a fictionalised family that you see in the book.
Dr Dix is now a Senior Fellow at SOAS (School of African and Oriental Studies), which is part of the University of London. He now runs a thing called PositiveNegatives. The idea is to turn academic research into comics and animations. The testimony of survivors can be anonymized and can tell parts of stories that were never - and could never be - filmed or photographed.
You can see that this is about the worthiest graphic novel in a long time. It raises two questions in my mind that I always find very disturbing.
One is – again we have a situation where white people are telling the stories of non white people because they have the wherewithal to do so. They are doing a grand job – one of their other projects, for instance, is all about sexual harassment in the garment industry in Bangladesh. I am not complaining. More power to their elbow. But I dunno, is this another version of the white savior complex? This exquisitely produced graphic novel makes me think – yes, it kind of is. But I don’t feel good about thinking that.
Much more importantly is that Vanni spotlights the horrible truth that local war crimes, however vicious, however depraved, will be barely noticed by the outside world. The civil war killed around about 100,000 people.
Vanni is the black-hole grim type.
It starts with life in a little seaside village in Sri Lanka, everyone pottering around, fishing and cooking and gossiping, but on page 41 :
It’s a wave – Aiyo, it’s a huge wave!
Yes, it’s the tsunami.
Then, three years later, on page 80:
You all need to be gone in an hour. Take the western road – waste no time! Don’t leave anyone behind!
It’s the civil war. The Tamil Tigers are clearing out villages and telling them all to leg it to a safer area. It turned out there wasn’t a safer area. We follow two families through the rest of the war, and we meet with all the things we have learned to expect in wartime – starvation, bombings of civilians by accident, bombings of civilians on purpose, panic, lost family members, conscription of family members, sudden death, misery, escape finally for the survivors, mental trauma.
This book is beautifully drawn by Lindsay Pollock. Five stars for the artwork.
(too small to give much of an idea - this is a large book)
The author Benjamin Dix is a Western guy who worked for the United Nations 2004-2008 and then did a PhD. He explained :
I interviewed hundreds of people whilst I worked in Vanni for 4 years (2004-2008) concerning the tsunami and then the war and displacement. I wrote my PhD in Anthropology on conflict and violence and the transformation of complex and traumatic testimonies and how to turn that into sequential art. The Vanni book was the foundation of my thesis. Lindsay and I then interviewed around 20 Tamil refugees in London, Zurich and Chennai. Due to security concerns of people’s identity we decided that we would amalgamate these interviews into a fictionalised family that you see in the book.
Dr Dix is now a Senior Fellow at SOAS (School of African and Oriental Studies), which is part of the University of London. He now runs a thing called PositiveNegatives. The idea is to turn academic research into comics and animations. The testimony of survivors can be anonymized and can tell parts of stories that were never - and could never be - filmed or photographed.
You can see that this is about the worthiest graphic novel in a long time. It raises two questions in my mind that I always find very disturbing.
One is – again we have a situation where white people are telling the stories of non white people because they have the wherewithal to do so. They are doing a grand job – one of their other projects, for instance, is all about sexual harassment in the garment industry in Bangladesh. I am not complaining. More power to their elbow. But I dunno, is this another version of the white savior complex? This exquisitely produced graphic novel makes me think – yes, it kind of is. But I don’t feel good about thinking that.
Much more importantly is that Vanni spotlights the horrible truth that local war crimes, however vicious, however depraved, will be barely noticed by the outside world. The civil war killed around about 100,000 people.
January 24, 2022
This was as powerful a read as it was heartbreaking. An extremely difficult read. It also made me realize that the medium of graphic novels is sometimes best suited to present global conflicts in a manner that non-fiction titles sometimes cannot.
June 24, 2021
(From the hazy recollections of young me)
2004
Me: What's a refugee?
Mom: They are people who have left their country to escape the fighting happening there. How did you come across this word?
Me: In that movie, someone called a Sri Lankan person a refugee. What are they escaping from?
Mom: ……..
2005
Me: What's a civil war?
Mom: It's when people from the same country fight with each other
Me: But that doesn't make sense, why are they fighting with their own people?
Mom: That's war honey! They hardly make sense if ever
2006
Me: Why doesn't someone put a stop to the war?
Mom: It's not as easy as that, it's quite complicated
2007
Me: What is the Sri Lankan Civil War about?
Teacher: The Sri Lankan Tamils are fighting against the Sinhalese for a separate state for them, the Tamil Eelam
Me: But why?
Teacher: That's enough questions for now
2008
Me: (watching grotesque images of war on the news) Why do people kill other people, what do they gain from that?
Mom: Please don't watch that, switch off the TV
2009
(News of LTTE Prabhakaran's death reaches us when we are outside)
Someone: Everyone go home soon, there may be a riot!
Now
The Sri Lankan Civil War was the first war that I learned about, probably because it was happening at a closer proximity to me. My city is less than 1400 kms from Sri Lanka. The echoes of the war reached across the ocean to my country, my state, my city. For a time the effects of the war were inescapable, and of all the graphic war memoirs that I've read recently this one, Vanni: A family's struggle through the Sri Lankan conflict, affects me the most. I've grown up with some vestiges of the war infiltrating daily life, have come in contact with the refugees, have seen the posters of the victims, fallen soldiers plastered all over the walls, the newspapers and the TV. Reading about it made me realise the actual horrors that take place during the War, filling in the missing blanks that were hidden from me.
Vanni, the story, made me fall headlong into the lives of the people. It was brutal, gruesome and oh so real! I was haunted for days after reading it, all the while aware that my emotions were nothing compared to the actual devastation experienced by the real life people whose stories had been recreated into this graphic book, in due part thanks to diligent research and effort by Benjamin Dix. The illustrations by Lindsay Pollock get the suffering through to the readers in minimal words. The silences spoke the loudest and are all the more powerful because of it!
This book is painful to read and yet we cannot fathom the degree of devastation felt by the people who lived through the ordeal. If there's anything that this book teaches you, it is that war makes no sense, whatsoever!
2004
Me: What's a refugee?
Mom: They are people who have left their country to escape the fighting happening there. How did you come across this word?
Me: In that movie, someone called a Sri Lankan person a refugee. What are they escaping from?
Mom: ……..
2005
Me: What's a civil war?
Mom: It's when people from the same country fight with each other
Me: But that doesn't make sense, why are they fighting with their own people?
Mom: That's war honey! They hardly make sense if ever
2006
Me: Why doesn't someone put a stop to the war?
Mom: It's not as easy as that, it's quite complicated
2007
Me: What is the Sri Lankan Civil War about?
Teacher: The Sri Lankan Tamils are fighting against the Sinhalese for a separate state for them, the Tamil Eelam
Me: But why?
Teacher: That's enough questions for now
2008
Me: (watching grotesque images of war on the news) Why do people kill other people, what do they gain from that?
Mom: Please don't watch that, switch off the TV
2009
(News of LTTE Prabhakaran's death reaches us when we are outside)
Someone: Everyone go home soon, there may be a riot!
Now
The Sri Lankan Civil War was the first war that I learned about, probably because it was happening at a closer proximity to me. My city is less than 1400 kms from Sri Lanka. The echoes of the war reached across the ocean to my country, my state, my city. For a time the effects of the war were inescapable, and of all the graphic war memoirs that I've read recently this one, Vanni: A family's struggle through the Sri Lankan conflict, affects me the most. I've grown up with some vestiges of the war infiltrating daily life, have come in contact with the refugees, have seen the posters of the victims, fallen soldiers plastered all over the walls, the newspapers and the TV. Reading about it made me realise the actual horrors that take place during the War, filling in the missing blanks that were hidden from me.
Vanni, the story, made me fall headlong into the lives of the people. It was brutal, gruesome and oh so real! I was haunted for days after reading it, all the while aware that my emotions were nothing compared to the actual devastation experienced by the real life people whose stories had been recreated into this graphic book, in due part thanks to diligent research and effort by Benjamin Dix. The illustrations by Lindsay Pollock get the suffering through to the readers in minimal words. The silences spoke the loudest and are all the more powerful because of it!
This book is painful to read and yet we cannot fathom the degree of devastation felt by the people who lived through the ordeal. If there's anything that this book teaches you, it is that war makes no sense, whatsoever!
September 24, 2019
This is an excellent if harrowing story of innocents being caught up the war zone of northern Sri Lanka, based on survivor testimony. Starting with the Boxing Day tsunami we follow the impact on two families as their everyday existence is ripped apart.
But there’s little opportunity to recover from this natural disaster as persecution of the Tamil population by both the government and the Tamil Tiger fighters decimates the remaining family members. Tens of thousands of innocent people begin a desperate journey to flee the violence that, now, is just a decade old.
It is a bleak and deeply frustrating story in one respect as we watch a group of people abandoned by the wider world and left to an awful fate, but on the other hand those that survived did so with immense bravery, fortitude and resilience that you can’t help but be moved by it. For those that lost their lives and those that survived it is a story that cries out to be told.
The events throughout the book are unjust and heartbreaking again and again, but Lindsay Pollock’s phenomenal art skills manage to soften the blow with his friendly illustrative style. Anything that approached a more grittier realism would be too hard to read. His illustrations are detailed without being cluttered and clearly benefit from his first-hand experience of seeing the aftermath. Meanwhile, Benjamin Dix’s story and research give a voice to a people that so richly deserves one.
It’ll grab you from the first few pages, where an innocent, casual conversation in a London taxi lays bear the world of difference between the driver and his passengers. Brilliantly and thoughtfully told throughout.
But there’s little opportunity to recover from this natural disaster as persecution of the Tamil population by both the government and the Tamil Tiger fighters decimates the remaining family members. Tens of thousands of innocent people begin a desperate journey to flee the violence that, now, is just a decade old.
It is a bleak and deeply frustrating story in one respect as we watch a group of people abandoned by the wider world and left to an awful fate, but on the other hand those that survived did so with immense bravery, fortitude and resilience that you can’t help but be moved by it. For those that lost their lives and those that survived it is a story that cries out to be told.
The events throughout the book are unjust and heartbreaking again and again, but Lindsay Pollock’s phenomenal art skills manage to soften the blow with his friendly illustrative style. Anything that approached a more grittier realism would be too hard to read. His illustrations are detailed without being cluttered and clearly benefit from his first-hand experience of seeing the aftermath. Meanwhile, Benjamin Dix’s story and research give a voice to a people that so richly deserves one.
It’ll grab you from the first few pages, where an innocent, casual conversation in a London taxi lays bear the world of difference between the driver and his passengers. Brilliantly and thoughtfully told throughout.
December 15, 2019
What a startling book with imagery as vivid as war before your very eyes. I have known little about the Sri Lankan conflict and much less about the impact on the hundreds of thousands of civilians it affected. Families torn apart literally and figuratively as a country is plunged into civil war. War is mindless always. Nothing is fair despite what they say. And in this case you get to read and see, if not almost experience the unfortunate manner in which innocents are caught in this crossfire of bloodlust.
I was touched deeply by this book. The storytelling is extraordinary and the visuals have come together in seamless concert with the words on the page. By the end of it all, it is almost personal. One of the best graphic novels of the year, easily.
I was touched deeply by this book. The storytelling is extraordinary and the visuals have come together in seamless concert with the words on the page. By the end of it all, it is almost personal. One of the best graphic novels of the year, easily.
December 21, 2019
Powerful graphic novel with beautifully crafted images. Had me in tears at parts. Thank you to Benjamin Dix and Lindsay Pollock for bringing these important stories back into the international limelight
September 7, 2021
I feel absurd describing a book as "hard to read" when the book is non-fiction about horrific topics, because it's hard not to consider the lesser impact of simply reading about something compared to living through it (or even experiencing it more directly through reporting etc). Nonetheless, I found this book challenging as things get worse and worse for the main family. At the same time, this book was really informative about a topic that doesn't get as much coverage as many others. Purely in terms of the artwork, it was not quite at the level of masterpieces of the genre, but again, it is devastating and educational.
February 17, 2021
Vanni is a beautifully illustrated, deeply researched book. It does the tough job of telling the story of violent conflict with empathy, with beauty and power.
It is embarrassing that having grown up so close to Sri Lanka, I was not aware of the details of the civil war while it was at its peak. This was a belated primer to the scale of the disruption through the eyes of a journalist who was in Sri Lanka during the war. The attention to detail in the foreground and the background in this book reveals a close understanding of the landscape. (Some of the panels are direct illustrations of images that were taken during the war). I want to know more and I think that is the main success of this book.
It is embarrassing that having grown up so close to Sri Lanka, I was not aware of the details of the civil war while it was at its peak. This was a belated primer to the scale of the disruption through the eyes of a journalist who was in Sri Lanka during the war. The attention to detail in the foreground and the background in this book reveals a close understanding of the landscape. (Some of the panels are direct illustrations of images that were taken during the war). I want to know more and I think that is the main success of this book.
August 15, 2023
Partiu-se-me lentamente o coração.
Leitura dura mas recompensadora.
Há lutas e tragédias que merecem ser tão belamente retratadas.
Leitura dura mas recompensadora.
Há lutas e tragédias que merecem ser tão belamente retratadas.
October 26, 2022
This was the most devastating book I’ve ever read. I can’t understate how important this piece of work is. I actually started it many weeks ago and had to take a break. There is so much more to be said about this book but this review cannot cover it.
May 18, 2023
This book portrays the Tamils struggle in Sri Lanka very well! It was difficult to read but amazingly portrayed!
July 9, 2020
Vanni is a fictional account of a family's experience through the recent Sri Lankan civil war. The people and incidents explored in Vanni draw upon the author's experience from interviewing many survivors, his academic research and his own experience living in Sri Lanka as part of a UN task force. This background brings a sense of gritty realism to the novel.
The author makes full use of the graphical novel format to tell the reader of the atrocities and suffering of so many innocents caught up in the horrific civil war. Neither side came out well, but as is the way, the victors (Sri Lankan government) can write history in their words. This book helps understand the reality from the Tamils' perspective. I found some of the scenes harrowing to read, and they stayed in my mind long after I put the book down. On completing the book, I also felt cross with the UN and various countries in failing to bring the perpetrators of such violence to account. So many international institutions were proven to be ineffective.
Sri Lanka is a beautiful country with charming people and fascinating history and culture. Reading this book has helped me better understand modern-day Sri Lanka, and it's recent, terrible past.
I'd recommend this book to anyone interested in modern Sri Lanka. It's also of interest if you want to learn more about the horrors people can commit on their countrymen and the ineffectualness of the UN and governments in either stopping such events or sanctioning the criminals.
The author makes full use of the graphical novel format to tell the reader of the atrocities and suffering of so many innocents caught up in the horrific civil war. Neither side came out well, but as is the way, the victors (Sri Lankan government) can write history in their words. This book helps understand the reality from the Tamils' perspective. I found some of the scenes harrowing to read, and they stayed in my mind long after I put the book down. On completing the book, I also felt cross with the UN and various countries in failing to bring the perpetrators of such violence to account. So many international institutions were proven to be ineffective.
Sri Lanka is a beautiful country with charming people and fascinating history and culture. Reading this book has helped me better understand modern-day Sri Lanka, and it's recent, terrible past.
I'd recommend this book to anyone interested in modern Sri Lanka. It's also of interest if you want to learn more about the horrors people can commit on their countrymen and the ineffectualness of the UN and governments in either stopping such events or sanctioning the criminals.
December 15, 2019
This graphic novel is about two families caught in the crossfire of the fight between the LTTE (Tamil Tigers Liberation Army). This heart-rending tales chronicles their fictional journey as the characters are separated, some die under pitiable circumstances and a few are able to seek asylum.
The artwork is dark and grey most of teh time and feels dull but it does convey the story well. The narrative is good and fairly chronological. The author is inspired by Joe Sacco's Palestine and Marjane Satrapi's Persepolis but they are a couple of cuts above. Still, a worthy effort to convey the horrors of wars and natural disasters and bring out the human stories within.
The artwork is dark and grey most of teh time and feels dull but it does convey the story well. The narrative is good and fairly chronological. The author is inspired by Joe Sacco's Palestine and Marjane Satrapi's Persepolis but they are a couple of cuts above. Still, a worthy effort to convey the horrors of wars and natural disasters and bring out the human stories within.
February 15, 2020
'Only the dead know the end of war...'
Non-inclusive policies of a state, followed by rise of a militant group and a nationalist government = perfect recipe for a civil war. Ironically, commoners are the ones who lose much more than the elites leading the war. For masses, internal displacement, manipulation and forced conversions and participation in the war are common. But the ripple effect of the war reshape these very people for generations to come. Punjab in '84, Sri Lankan Tamils in 2000s, different places, similar story.
What amazes me is the fact that this happened just a decade ago and people aren't really talking about it.
Non-inclusive policies of a state, followed by rise of a militant group and a nationalist government = perfect recipe for a civil war. Ironically, commoners are the ones who lose much more than the elites leading the war. For masses, internal displacement, manipulation and forced conversions and participation in the war are common. But the ripple effect of the war reshape these very people for generations to come. Punjab in '84, Sri Lankan Tamils in 2000s, different places, similar story.
What amazes me is the fact that this happened just a decade ago and people aren't really talking about it.
June 18, 2021
Graphic novels are often underrated with the stereotypical misnomer of "comic books." This dismissal, however, is unwarranted as proven by Vanni. The authors and illustrators interweave a poignant narrative of tragedy and revivalism set against the backdrop of the Tamil genocide undertaken by the majority Sinhalese in Sri Lanka post-2004. What makes Vanni so compulsive is that alongside a moving story, it also visualizes that very story. The almost cartoonish drawings reflect an innocence which by the conclusion is phased into innocence lost as the protagonists go through hell and back. This is a graphic novel of historic proportions.
June 10, 2021
Beautiful and informative. One of my first graphic novels. It is not lost on me how difficult it is to illustrate tragedy and war. In the same breath how important it is to do so. The Lankan war was happening in the mid to late 2000s, as I was graduating from college. My reality of those years cannot be further away from what was happening in a world not to far away from where I lived. As a resident of the international community we failed the tamil civilians of Srilanka. Documents like this book will remind us of the failure and hope we all learn from this.
February 2, 2022
Damn. That was the most difficult thing I have ever read. I have read a variety of other graphic novels about war, but this book is particularly intense. It’s not even visually that graphic compared to some other war stories. This is basically genocide and it is hard to read. I cried at one point. I just stared at many pages and cursed in disbelief at what these poor people still had to go through. What was the most difficult about this story is that the trauma never stops. It’s just years and years of desperate trying to stay alive and slowly being picked off by the surrounding armies.
May 6, 2021
I fell in love with graphic novels when I read Persepolis but this book made me understand the power a graphic novel holds. It's not just the story that is powerful but even the illustrations hits you hard. While the world is focussed on the conflicts in Palestine and Syria, this book became a necessity to focus on the violence in Sri Lanka. This book also exposes the functioning of government in a conflict zone and the role of UN.
March 18, 2022
Found a bit of trouble remembering the characters for a good initial chunk of the book. But that didn't come in the way of the hard-hitting storytelling of this graphic novel.
The book is about the Sri Lankan conflict through the eyes of a common family. At first I wasn't so sure I would be moved as much by this medium (graphic novel) of storytelling. But Vanni has been one of the best books I have picked up this year.
The book is about the Sri Lankan conflict through the eyes of a common family. At first I wasn't so sure I would be moved as much by this medium (graphic novel) of storytelling. But Vanni has been one of the best books I have picked up this year.
June 26, 2021
I cannot recommend this book enough.
I put off reading it for over a week, cos I wasn't sure if I wanted to read something that would leave me distraught. And while it's left me distraught, I'm so glad that I read it.
The art is great, and does great justice to the topic and the events.
10/10 would recommend.
I put off reading it for over a week, cos I wasn't sure if I wanted to read something that would leave me distraught. And while it's left me distraught, I'm so glad that I read it.
The art is great, and does great justice to the topic and the events.
10/10 would recommend.
May 23, 2021
A heart wrenching, beautifully illustrated account following two families through the ethnic conflict of Sri Lanka. The authors do a marvellous job in bringing th characters to life and I really enjoyed the style of sketches.
February 9, 2025
Maybe this is the year I read more graphic novels. Picked this up on a whim when discovering the section at the library. It’s a brutal documentary of the plight of two families through the 2004 Tsunami and ensuing Sri Lankan civil war. It’s tragic and heartbreaking.
July 13, 2020
Heart breakingly excellent.
July 16, 2020
It's definitely heart-wrenching and must read. Please try not to cry
September 2, 2020
Para curarse de rivalidades partidistas de cualquier clase. Te arranca las lágrimas del alma. Imprescindible.
November 11, 2020
Beautifully sad.
April 22, 2021
A heartbreaking and harrowing read. Stunning artwork.
October 7, 2021
Reading this makes me ashamed of how much I didn’t know about the war in Sri Lanka starting after the tsunami of 2004. Historical fiction based on real people in graphic novel format.
March 4, 2022
Recommend this one, especially if the style of Maus resonated with you
October 11, 2022
look at trigger warnings before reading
Displaying 1 - 30 of 37 reviews