On the day the Herath family moves in, Sal Mal Lane is still a quiet street – but the tremors of civil war are mounting, and the conflict threatens to engulf them all. In a heart-rending novel poised between the past and the future, the innocence of the children – a beloved sister and her over-protective siblings, a rejected son and his twin sisters, two very different brothers – contrasts sharply with the petty prejudices of the adults charged with their care. On Sal Mal Lane is a story of what was lost to a country and her people, and a cry for reconciliation.