A journalist's account of his extensive travels in Sri Lanka and portrayal of the Sri Lankans who carry on in the midst of conflict and strife between warring factions of Sinhalese Buddhists and Tamils.

The Teardrop Island follows in the footsteps of the eccentric Victorian James Emerson Tennent, along a route which takes Cherry to pilgrimage trails, tea estates, and rural regions inhabited by indigenous tribes, and through areas of the former warzone, delving under the surface of the contemporary culture via cricket matches and fortune tellers.