A Passage North by Anuk Arudpragasam

A Passage North

Anuk Arudpragasam

Full of rhetorical flourishes and meticulous detail, this philosophical meditation on violence and memory encapsulates the traumatic aftermath of civil war. Focusing on sophomoric musings, we experience a war-scarred disquisition of love and life. Poetic and eloquent with rich, rewarding sentences; slow-moving yet exhilarating.

Extract

It was funny how similar desire was to loss in this way, how desire too, like bereavement, could cut through the fabric of ordinary life, causing the routines and rhythms that had governed your existence so totally as to seem unquestionable to quietly lose the hard glint of necessity, leaving you almost in a state of disbelief, unable to participate in the world … so that suddenly the life you'd been living for the last so many months or years, a life that till that very moment seemed fulfilling, satisfactory, or tolerable at least, became, with the soundless flicking of a switch, empty and hollow, lacking any connection to the person you felt you were or wanted to be.

Parallels
  • The Seven Moons of Maali Almeida by Shehan Karunatilaka
  • The Pavilion in the Clouds by Alexander McCall Smith
  • Amnesty by Aravind Adiga
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Violence