THE JAFFNA PUBLIC Library sits in the ancestral capital of the Tamil people of Sri Lanka (also known as Yalpanam). It was built in the 1950s and housed one of the largest archives of Tamil culture in the world. At the height of its collection, it contained almost 100,000 books and historical records about the Tamil civilisation and our presence in Sri Lanka.

It held sacred Hindu texts, old maps, ancient verses etched into palm leaves, fragile scrolls about Ayurvedic medicine, the manuscripts of Tamil writers and intellectuals, the journals of early Christian missionaries and old newspapers.