The A to Z of Conflict
By Abdul Halik Azeez, Muhanned Cader, Arjuna Gunarathne, Nina Mangalanayagam, Nillanthan, Anomaa Rajakaruna, T. Shanaathanan, Anushiya Sundaralingam, Chandraguptha Thenuwara, and Kamala Vasuki
Commissioned and published by Raking Leaves, Colombo, 2019

Discoveries and paradigmatic shifts call forth new terminology for describing what was previously never, or differently, conceived—changes assiduously preserved in lexica, from ancient Sumerian-Akkadian cuneiform tablets to today’s Dictionary.com.

The role of language in indexing social, political, and conceptual realities is the basis of Sri Lankan nonprofit Raking Leaves’ The A to Z of Conflict, a compendium of words pertaining to violent strife for every letter of the Sinhala, Tamil, and English alphabets. Over the course of five years, the publisher invited ten Sri Lankan artists to produce illustrated entries inspired by the format of children’s alphabet books. Each script takes up a section of the book, which comes in six versions, spanning all chapter permutations, to avoid any inference of linguistic hierarchy. This remains a sensitive issue in Sri Lanka, where the brutal civil war (1983–2009) between minority Tamil insurgents and the Sinhalese-Buddhist ruling majority casts a long shadow.