​This month we present Tamil writing. The Tamil literary tradition of associating images with landscapes informs the fiction and poetry here, as writers locate their considerations of alienation, exile, and diaspora, and address how identities and customs change with both figurative and literal terrain. In tales from two masters, Sundara Ramaswamy’s retired bureaucrat bristles at a young man’s perceived slight, and Ashokamitran evokes Borges, Emily Dickinson, and Ambrose Bierce. The old collides with the new as Sukumaran and Kutti Revathi investigate cross-caste marriages, Appudurai Muttalingam finds a traditional community torn apart by war, and Imayam shows the true chasm between a distant son and his plaintive mother. Che Guevara turns up in both Dhamayanti’s look at a charismatic revolutionary and Perundevi’s challenge to a divinity. Dilip Kumar’s sly fable depicts an unlikely duel. In poetry from Sri Lanka, Aazhiyaal’s transposition of myth reverberates with the horrors of the long ethnic war, Thirumavalavan writes from a jarring snowscape, Malathi Maitri considers the exile’s endless road, Sharmila Sayeed moves between Sri Lanka and India, and Krishangini confronts free-floating terror. We thank our guest editor, Lakshmi Holmström, as well as Subashree Krishnaswamy for her assistance with the texts.