Unexpectedly is a poetry collection that captures life in Sri Lanka from the 1970s onwards—written from the inter-space of war and peace, the throes of the pandemic, and the edge of political chaos and personal crisis.It is a moving treatise that sweeps from the personal to the political, to the social, to the cerebral and the philosophical. The themes traverse from universal topics such as humanity, time, feminism, violence, anddeath to the experiential—the author’s life in academia, her encounters with diseases, and the gains and costs of her husband’s political career.Written in a medley of poetic voices that are passionate as well as tranquil, measured as well as nonchalant, ironic as well as sincere, these poems are haunting and imaginative, at once instinctive even as they are historical.