"The Broken Palmyra" is a very disturbing account of what has gone on, indeed what is still going on, in the North of Sri Lanka. It documents in painful detail what the Sri Lankan government and the Indian "Peace-Keepers" have been doing and, more informatively, what our "heroes" in the various militant movements (and even the nonmilitant politicians) are really like. Not what they pretend to be, but what they really are. Not what our biases, hopes and imagination make them to be, but what they are. No person or group is spared, and no information suppressed for fear of offending a particular interest. The militant groups, the Indian army and the Sri Lankan army, have a charge to answer to. It is the assassination of one of the authors. We may not know who killed Dr. Rajani Thiranagama, but we must certainly know why she was killed. She was killed because of her human rights work and her contribution to "The Broken Palmyra". It was a warning to the others that the totalitarian regime that has established itself in Jaffna, whatever its changing label may be, is not to be challenged, questioned or exposed. Rajani's murderers were trying to destroy a lot more than an outstanding daughter of Jaffna who has done so much for her people. For this reason alone, as someone concerned with the plight of the Tamil people, I am delighted to see the publication of this book.