Anuk ArudpragasamAnmeldelser

Rating: 4/5

TW: Death, PTSD

A book that takes you through a journey of reflecting upon life and accepting the process of death, A PASSAGE NORTH, is one of the most indulging piece of fiction I have read this year.

Devoid of dialogue with sentences that last pages, Anuk Arudpragasam managed to deliver topics that felt so personal and hit me with waves of nostalgia more than once. The book, divided into 3 sections - Message, Journey and Burning begins with the MC, Krishan, receiving the news of demise of his grandmother's care-taker, Rani over a phone call.

What follows is a trip to the ever-so philosophical mind of Krishan where he recollects, introspects and comes to terms with several aspects of his past and the death of Rani.

Mundane things such as taking a walk, smoking a cigarette, travelling on a train are explained in such detail that you will be transported to the said circumstances and will not be able to help but relate with them.

The MC reflects on his previous relationship with Anjum, a queer woman from Bangalore, his train journey with her, his grand mother's daily routine and past few years of her life, the conversations he has had with Rani regarding the loss she has faced in the war and it's impact on her mental health and many more while taking a train to attend Rani's funeral.

The detail in which the MC remembers little moments he had shared with his then girlfriend and a few with his grand-mother on multiple instances in the book, reiterates how impactful these little moments are and how such memories have a silent power to shape us.

I related so much to how he processed Rani's death, having gone through a similar process with the death of my grand father.

It was also interesting to learn about the struggle for freedom in Sri Lanka, their Hindu funeral rituals and how similar they are to that of India.

Overall, the book encapsulated a lot of emotions and thoughts that will stay imbibed in your mind for a while. A great book to read and definitely a contender for the short-list!

I am extremely thankful to the author for referencing the stories and poems that he had explained in such detail with respect to how the MC had perceived it in the acknowledgements. It will be helpful in a journey to find, read and interpret those stories with our own minds.

Door een toeval (of niet?) is dit nu de tweede roman op korte tijd die ik lees van een Srilankese auteur. ‘The Seven Moons of Mali Almeida’ van Shehan Karunatilaka overrompelde me door de hilarisch-sarcastische toon waarmeer de harde realiteit van de Srilankese burgeroorlog in de verf werd gezet. Het boek van Arudpragasam is heel andere koek. Ook dat gaat wel over de wreedheid van de oorlog, maar de invalshoek en de toonzetting is helemaal anders. Arudpragasam volgt de jonge Krishan die met de trein onderweg is naar de begrafenis van de verzorgster van zijn grootmoeder. In een vernuftige compositie blijven we heel de tijd in het hoofd van Krishan, met voortdurend mijmeringen over het oorlogstrauma van die verzorgster, over zijn afgebroken relatie met de bloedmooie Anjum die blijkbaar gekozen heeft voor een radicaal engagement, over zijn eigen schuldgevoelens over zijn afgeschermd leven, enzovoort. Er is een verhaallijn, maar die is eigenlijk flinterdun en ontspint zich erg traag, in soms erg lange zinnen, regelmatig onderbroken door filosofische beschouwingen en verwijzingen naar vertellingen uit de boeddhistische en hindoeïstische traditie. Al meteen bij het begin zet Arudpragasam de toon door een anderhalve pagina lange filosofische beschouwing over het fenomeen van de tijd, hoezeer het heden aan ons kleeft, en zowel verleden als toekomst daardoor onbereikbaar achter de horizon blijven. “The present, we assume, is eternally before us, one of the few things in life from which we cannot be parted. It overwhelms us in the painful first moments of entry into the world, when it is still too new to be managed or negotiated, remains by our side during childhood and adolescence, in those years before the weight of memory and expectation, and so it is sad and a little unsettling to see that we become, as we grow older, much less capable of touching, grazing, or even glimpsing it, that the closest we seem to get to the present are those brief moments we stop to consider the spaces our bodies are occupying, the intimate warmth of the sheets in which we wake, the scratched surface of the window on a train taking us somewhere else, as if the only way we can hold time still is by trying physically to prevent the objects around us from moving.”.
Die verwijzingen naar het mysterieuze fenomeen van de tijd keren telkens terug, zowel in verband met Rani, met Anjum als met het oorlogsverleden, en deden me sterk aan het schema van de Duitse temporaliteitsfilosoof Reinhart Koselleck denken. Het geeft meteen ook het cerebrale gehalte van deze roman aan, dat versterkt wordt door de soms lange meanderende zinnen die aan Thomas Bernhardt en Javier Marias doen denken. Om maar te zeggen dat dit boek wellicht de lezer die een sterk verhaal verwacht niet zal bekoren. Als er al evolutie in deze roman zit, dan is het in de manier waarop Krishna in het reine komt met zijn schuldgevoel, met zijn afgebroken relatie, met leven en dood in het algemeen. Dat maakt dat de bedachtzame, fijnzinnige, introspectieve toon en structuur van deze roman van een zeldzaam hoog niveau. Ik ben erg benieuwd wat Arudpragasam nog uit zijn mouw zal schudden.½

The marriage and the novel are both brief; but the story is as long as civilization.

Behind the photos of refugees that we see in the news there are people trying to live lives. To do normal things. Big things like marrying. Small things like having a meal together.

The grief is beyond tears.

Read this book! I mean, LISTEN!

This is a beautifully written, introspective book that follows the thoughts of protagonist Krishan. It is set in Sri Lanka and contains only the barest thread of a plot. His grandmother’s caretaker, Rani, has died after traveling back to her home in northern Sri Lanka. Krishan journeys by train from Colombo to attend the funeral. Rani has experienced multiple tragedies in her life, including the violent deaths of two sons in the country’s civil war. As Krishan travels, he remembers people and events that have had a lasting impact on him and the people he loves.

Krishan’s thoughts address many aspects of life, such as love, loss, grief, aging, death, desire, yearning, and memory. He recalls the violence that changed so many lives. His thoughts return regularly to three women: his mother, grandmother, and his first love. He thinks about the war and its lingering impact a decade later. It is a philosophical book that examines the aftermath of the country’s civil war and how we spend our time on this earth.

I am amazed at the author’s ability to capture nuances, subtleties, and interpretations of what is seen, heard, and felt. Krishan’s thoughts flow from one topic to the next, as thoughts tend to do. I felt totally immersed in this story. I stopped several times just to contemplate. It is not one to rush through. I will definitely re-read this novel and can envision it winning literary prizes.

“Waking up each morning we follow by circuitous routes the thread of habit, out of our homes, into the world, and back to our beds at night, move unseeingly through familiar paths, one day giving way to another and one week to the next, so that when in the midst of this daydream something happens and the thread is finally cut, when, in a moment of strong desire or unexpected loss, the rhythms of life are interrupted, we look around and are quietly surprised to see that the world is vaster than we thought.”

The audio book is narrated by Neil Shah. His narration is quiet, almost somber, and fits the content. I listened to it twice and feel audio is a great vehicle for digesting the lengthy, stream-of-consciousness style sentences.

A Passage North, Anuk Arludpragasam, author; Neil Shah, narrator
This most definitely is Krishan’s story, and although it is utterly exhausting in its description and detail, it is also so beautifully written, in a soft voice that neither raises nor lowers one’s blood pressure, that it rolls out without creating any anxiety . As Krishan’s life is examined, as we look through the window of his feelings and examine his behavior, the strife and destruction of war also quietly enter the picture; still, even when that is told, the stress level does not rise; the prose smoothly rolls out, evenly and thoughtfully as it expresses the temperament of its main character.
Told like one long reminiscence, Krishan and Sri Lanka come to life. As we learn about Krishan, we go from his time as a professor in India to the war torn north of his country, Sri Lanka, where Tamils largely lived. Using his pen, the author has done a yeoman’s job of presenting the picture of his world, with all of its warts and foibles in a country rocked by civil war for decades. Although Krishan is Tamil, he remained outside the country, in India, during the war with the Sinhalese, who are in the majority. He escaped from the horrors with its brutality and destruction, from the awful emotional crises of those subjected to the violence and the fear, from the pain of the loss of loved ones, property and way of life. Not all could recover from such total devastation, but Krishan is determined to move on as he explores and learns more about what took place and how it affected others, as he explores his life and life’s raison d’être.
As Krishan searches for answers, complex ideas are revealed. How do we approach life, death, and aging? What is our purpose? Getting old involves great loss. He had not realized the effect of it on his grandmother, but as her strength, power and mobility diminish, he is forced to face mortality. How does one deal with the shadow of utter loneliness which can be devastating? How do we approach war and peace if we are removed from the actual violence? What do we ultimately want if not freedom and independence? Is that what we are all searching for as we take different paths? In a story about Sri Lanka, the author has managed to also examine human existence everywhere. He includes current themes like the lgbtq lifestyles, politics, the environment, women’s rights and more without causing any conflict or confusion, so light is his nonjudgmental touch
The book is not exciting, quite the contrary, it is slow moving and not uplifting, but is also so alive with important explanations and revelations, one cannot put it down. The reader is moved to learn more about the customs, the culture and the history, as without expending too much energy, the civil war and its aftermath are illuminated.
The juxtaposition of each word in every sentence was so poetic and eloquent that, at times, I lost sight of the story because of the beauty of the expression. Not one word was wasted. Through Appamma and Rani we learn about loneliness and different kinds of loss, about life and death, the life of a plant the decay of the body and mind. Through Anjun and Krishan we learn about what we search for and how we go about it, how we choose our lifestyles and partners. We are all searching for something, for some purpose.
As if the narrator is watching Krishan’s life on a screen, he relates everything without undue emotion, just refers to facts and events as they come up, sometimes moving back and forth in time. Adding to this, the actual reader of the audio book did a masterful job with this novel, never interjecting himself into the narrative, but rather reading it as if he was viewing it all take place with us. As he narrates the story of Krishan’s feelings and memories to the reader, like the peaceful meandering of a river, this story is told, often quoting from legends and poems that reveal the story of others searching for answers, answers that do not always satisfy the seekers. Float on with these stories and be enlightened. I do not think you will be sorry, for in the end, the experience is quite exhilarating.

54. A Passage North by Anuk Arudpragasam
reader: Neil Shah
published: 2021
format: 9:15 audible audiobook (304-pages in hardcover)
acquired: October 26
listened: Oct 26 – Nov 7
rating: 4 (maybe 4 plus)
locations: Sri Lanka & parts in Delhi and Bombay, India.
about the author: Tamil author born in 1988 in Colombo, Sri Lanka. Attended Stanford University and received a PhD in philosophy at Columbia University in 2019.

When this book opens and Krishan learns about the death of his grandmother's caretaker, I assumed he was going to focus on his grandmother and his family. But he then gets side tracked and this goes on and on. It took me a little while to realize these sidetracks were the book. And it also took me a while to realize that this caretaker, Rani, was the key subject - a representative of the tragedy of the Sri Lanka civil war.

My fifth audiobook from the Booker longlist, this is all in the head of Krishan, a Tamil from Sri Lanka who experienced the civil war only from a distance. His passage north is to Rani's funeral. Rani, we learn, lost two of her three children to the civil war, both her boys, one on the last day of the war, a final shelling. She was broken, and never could recover. As Krishan travels, he reflects... on the Tamil loss, the war‘s horrors, and on his own life, all with some philosophical touches. Rani's funeral serves as a kind of focal point. The text is really fine, although it demands your full attention, so is a little challenging on audio. But it's carefully worded, meaningful and readable. I put this on the high end of 4 stars. I enjoyed it.

2021
https://www.librarything.com/topic/333774#7653632

Anuk Arudpragasam (1988) is een jonge (Tamil) schrijver en filosoof uit Sri Lanka. A Passage North is zijn tweede boek. Het stond op de shortlist voor de Booker Prize van 2021, wat meestal aanbeveling genoeg is om iets te gaan lezen. Dit in combinatie met mijn waarschijnlijk onmogelijke streven om uit elk land van de wereld eens een boek te lezen (en nee, Sri Lanka had nog geen vinkje) maakte dit boek voor mij onweerstaanbaar.

Om maar meteen met de deur in huis te vallen: A passage north is geen makkelijk boek om te lezen. Dat komt omdat er heel weinig gebeurt, en omdat het nauwelijks dialoog bevat. In het boek volg je Krishan, een jonge Tamil uit Colombo, de hoofdstad van Sri Lanka. Het verhaal begint als hij hoort dat Rani, de vrouw die de laatste jaren voor zijn oma heeft gezorgd, om het leven is gekomen. Hij reist naar het noorden van het land, vandaar de titel, om bij de crematie aanwezig te kunnen zijn. Dat is eigenlijk de volledige samenvatting van het plot. Kortom, dit is geen plot-gedreven boek!

Krishan is opgegroeid in Colombo, buiten het traditionele Tamil-gebied, waardoor hem de gruwelen van de burgeroorlog grotendeels bespaard zijn gebleven. Ja, zijn vader blijkt om het leven gekomen bij een bomaanslag, maar dit speelt nauwelijks een rol in zijn gedachten of in het verhaal. Hij heeft gestudeerd in Delhi, in India, waar hij korte tijd een relatie had met Anjum, een vrouw die hij nog steeds niet uit zijn hoofd kan zetten. Een paar jaar voordat dit verhaal begint is hij teruggekeerd naar Sri Lanka, om te helpen met de wederopbouw in het noorden, na de burgeroorlog. En sinds kort woont hij weer in Colombo, bij zijn moeder en oma.

Je volgt als lezer als het ware de gedachten van Krishan. En die gedachten, die meanderen associatief alle kanten op. Ze gaan over de liefde (en dan vooral zijn grote liefde Anjum), over ouder worden, over de dood, over de burgeroorlog en trauma, over afstand, over Boeddhisme, over identiteit, over boeken en oude verhalen, over documentaires en over reizen. Om maar een paar voorbeelden te noemen. Arudpragasam’s achtergrond als filosoof komt duidelijk naar voren.

Het boek is dus enorm introspectief. Lastig om te beoordelen! Bij vlagen vond ik het prachtig geschreven en boeiend. Op andere momenten vond ik het saai en langdradig. De context waarin het verhaal is geplaatst is interessant, maar had ik liever gehoord vanuit een personage als Rani, die de oorlog heeft meegemaakt, dan vanuit Krishan, die alles van een afstandje aanschouwt (waarschijnlijk net als Arudpragasam zelf). Ook gaat een relatief groot deel van het boek over Krishan’s relatie met Anjum, wat eigenlijk helemaal los staat van de rest van het verhaal.

Kortom, zeker een interessant boek, en origineel. Maar wat mij betreft terecht dat dit de Booker Prize uiteindelijk niet gewonnen heeft. Lees het als je interesse hebt in wat meer filosofisch getinte boeken. Laat het liggen als je houdt van boeken met veel actie.½

I thought all the writers who could write long, beautiful, luscious prose were...well, dead. (I'm looking at you, Anita Brookner.) But this book is absolutely beautifully written like nothing I've read from other writers recently. Not much plot but a young man is mulling over his life and the war in Sri Lanka as he walks, and later takes a train across the country. It's heartbreaking learning about how the country was devastated by war but the writing is the star here. Just so beautiful. Booker shortlist.

After the war has ended, a man takes a long walk in Columbo, Sri Lanka, and later he takes a train to attend the funeral of his grandmother's caretaker. Along the way, he remembers other walks and other train journeys he took in India with the woman he fell in love with. Anuk Arudpragasam's novel has a deceptively simple framework from which he explores the aftermath of Sri Lanka's long war on its citizens and the life of those who leave their home countries.

And while all that would be reason enough to make this novel a stand-out, the real reason to read A Passage North is for the writing, which is beautiful. Arudpragasam describes the places Krishan travels through and exists in so as to make the reader feel present in a specific place and time, to see things through the protagonist's eyes and to understand the people he interacts with. This is a remarkable novel and I'm glad that it has been put on the Booker shortlist.½

Not surprising that a Sri Lankan author should choose to place a novel in the context of the civil war. But really that situation is as much opportunisitc as relevant. The book is a meditative one. The principal character, Dinesh, spends as much time in contemplation and meditation as much as in action. He is acutely aware of his body rather than his surroundings. It is as though the author is taking the first lesson of meditation technique as his plot. Breath in, breath out, be aware only of the breath entering your nostrils. And as you meditate inevitably the mind wanders a little and recalls events in your life or ponders problems and incidents you had forgotten. So the marriage and the war are incidental rather than the core of the writing.

Four and a half stars.

This was such an excellent read. It was visceral and immediate, and although it dragged in a few small places, I highly recommend it to everyone (except maybe people with PTSD).

The one part I disliked immensely was the ending--Ganga dying instead of Dinesh. He spent the entire book acknowledging that death was only a few days or weeks away; the marriage proposal was the only thing in his life since leaving home that really shook him out of the fugue that developed as a result of the war and the constant death surrounding him.

We don't know if Ganga was resigned to dying. While I fully understand why the author killed Ganga instead of Dinesh, and accept that doing so really drove home the injustice of the world, the story had primed me to expect that Dinesh would die at the end. To have that expectation subverted disturbed me and, frankly, made me angry as only a reader who feels cheated can feel.

This is a compelling storyline and there are some beautiful sentences here, but I did not enjoy the writing overall. I felt that there was too much exposition. The story was too close to the character, almost like a stream of consciousness narrative.

*I received a free copy of this book in exchange for an honest review*

Very well-written with a keen attention to detail. Everyday activities that many take for granted, including personal hygiene and grooming, as well as various injuries, settings, and feelings, are precisely documented. The subject of the refugee camp during a tumultuous time in Sri Lanka is heavy material, but the author never lets the book get too depressing. There were a few times towards the end of the book where my flow in the reading was disrupted due to extremely long sentences that I had to read and reread a few times, but other than that, I really enjoyed this book.

Recently I saw a quote by Virginia Woolf, from A Room of One's Own, about novels with integrity, and I realised it could also work as an accurate description of this book. This book affords its characters, especially the main character Dinesh through whom we see this war-ravaged slice of world, dignity. I think there is an ethics to this careful, precise, philosophical writing. That anyone who writes like this must consistently value the moral in process of creation and the responsibility that comes with it. I realise this is a slippery slope, to attribute some quality to the author of these words as though the author and the words are one. I remind myself that all art is artifice and language, especially when artfully constructed, can deceive us. But I also want to believe in the conscience at work behind truthful writing. Otherwise, what is the point of writing and reading?

A longer piece that I wrote for Pop Matters is available here.

It took a while for me to recover after coming to the devastating end of this extraordinary short novel. I knew what was coming – it is called The Story of a Brief Marriage after all – and from the very first pages when Dinesh, a Sri Lankan evacuee during the Sri Lankan civil war, moves across a blasted landscape with a gravely injured child in his arms, I knew this story could not end well. But it is so exquisitely crafted, and the character of Dinesh so powerfully wrought, that the reader comes to share his tentative hopes.
Shortlisted for the Dylan Thomas Prize and winner of the DSC Prize for South Asian Literature, The Story of a Brief Marriage is Anuk Arudpragasam’s first novel. It tells the story of how Dinesh, over the course of a day and a night, moves from a state of numb acceptance of having lost everything, to a hesitant awakening. The story begins in a refugee camp, one of many which has formed as the civilians try to flee being caught between government forces and what is always referred to as ‘the movement’, which I take to mean the Tamil Tigers. As the conflict draws in, the refugees are crushed towards the coast, and although Dinesh seems not much more than a boy, there is a constant risk that – if he isn’t killed by the shelling – as an able-bodied male he will be captured and enlisted to fight for the movement.
‘Able-bodied’ is a relative term. He has not slept for days, and he has not eaten. He shed no tears when his mother was killed. But he is strong enough in body to help with bringing the injured to what little help is available. This is the confronting first paragraph, indicative of pages that made me put the book aside sometimes, to walk outside in the garden to hear the carefree laughter of the children next door:

Most children have two whole legs and two whole arms but this little six-year-old that Dinesh was carrying had already lost one leg, the right one from the lower thigh down, and was now about to lose his right arm. Shrapnel had dissolved his hand and forearm into a soft, formless mass, spilling to the ground from some parts, congealing in others, and charred everywhere else. Three of the fingers had been fully detached, where they were now it was impossible to tell, and the two remaining still, the index finger and thumb, were dangling from the hand by very slender threads. They swayed uncertainly in the air, tapping each other quietly, till arriving at last in the operating area Dinesh knelt to the ground, and laid the boy out carefully on an empty tarpaulin. His chest, it seemed, was hardly moving. His eyes were closed, and his face was calm, unknowing. That he was not in the best of conditions there could be no doubt, but all that mattered for the time being was that the boy was safe. Soon the doctor would arrive and the operation would be done, and in no time at all the arm would be as nicely healed as the already amputated thigh. (p.1)

(I could not read this book at night at all. I read Rod Usher’s light-hearted Poor Man’s Wealth instead. More about that later).
It is in this calm, detached tone, that Arudpragasam relates a story that most of us cannot possibly imagine, even though we see images from war zones on our TV screens all the time. As the shelling of the camp continues, an old man approaches Dinesh, asking if he will consent to marry his daughter Ganga.
To read the rest of my review please visit https://anzlitlovers.com/2018/01/18/the-story-of-a-brief-marriage-by-anuk-arudpr...

Review originally published on my blog Musings of a Bookish Kitty: http://www.literaryfeline.com/2017/02/bookish-thoughts-story-of-brief.html

The Story of a Brief Marriage by Aunk Arudpragasam
Flatiron Books, 2016
Fiction; 208 pgs

The Story of a Brief Marriage first came to my attention when it arrived in My Lit Box subscription the end of last year. I was able to fit it in as my last book read of 2016, and what a read it was! In the novel, Sri Lanka has been in civil war for decades and the army has pushed the Tamil minority up against the coast. Dinesh, one refugee among many, has been on the run for so long that he barely remember his life before--and yet, what he does remember is worlds away from where he is now. It was as if he had been a different person. So much has changed. Now, he is numb and surviving the best he can. He is going through the motions.

Something inside Dinesh awakens when he is approached with a marriage proposal. When was the last time he had family of his own? He longs to be needed and the desire to protect and care for another human being grows in him the more he considers the proposal. Ganga is reluctant to marry Dinesh. She had just lost her mother and brother two weeks before. Dinesh wonders at the father's motives for wanting to marry off his daughter, but in a way, he understands.

We really do not get to know Ganga's full story, which I wish we could have seen more into. This is all Dinesh's story, however. At the start of the novel, he is helping an injured boy--we see over the course of the novel that Dinesh is a caring and thoughtful human being. There is a scene with a crow that offers the reader a deeper glimpse at Dinesh's mindset over the course of the novel. Ganga's reaction is how I might have reacted, but Dinesh offers a different perspective, about life and holding onto it as long as we can, no matter how painful.

I can't even imagine being in a situation like Dinesh and Ganga. In a scene near the end, there is a boy standing and staring, not reacting in the middle of a missile attack, and I thought of the photo of the little boy in Aleppo, numb and not crying, that was all over the media last year. Like him, so many in this situation are numb to what goes on around them, having to always live in fear. It comes down to just trying to survive: to eat and sleep and even relieving oneself.

Anuk Arudpragasam's The Story of a Brief Marriage is beautifully written. It takes place over a 24 hour time period and is just over 200 pages, but is not a quick read. It is detailed and contemplative. The novel is an experience more than it is a story. I felt the numbness and desperation of the characters. I felt raw inside. Everything we do and have--what we often take for granted--how easy to forget how many advantages we have. How little we really need. How unimportant it all is, especially when in situation like Dinesh and Ganga, where survival is all they can focus on. The Story of a Brief Marriage is a reminder of how fragile we all are, and yet how resilient we can be. It is also the story of how war can rip us bear and leave us raw. We keep going, surviving in the worst of circumstances because we have to.

This is pretty short - less than 200 pages - but a powerful read in those few pages. The Sri Lankan author sets his novel at the end of the recent conflict in the country. Dinesh is a young man (around 18) in anew informal refugee camp between Tamil Tigers and the Sri Lankan state army who are on the point of overrunning them. It's clear the situation is hopeless. The question is not if death will come but when. The first scene, where Dinesh witnesses a brutal amputation as the doctors have run out of medical supplies, sets the tone for the book: if it had been a film I would have looked away consistently throughout. Despite this brutality, the novel is beautifully written: the author shows the numbing effect of pain and loss, as well as the desperate circle around the drain of refugees forced by war into progressively more awful circumstances.

This quote is taken from near the end of the novel, where the author seems to take a step back and acknowledge the artificial nature of the writing process, trying to recreate the horror of young men and women's experiences,
"There were events after which, no matter how long or intimately one has tried to be by their side, no matter how earnestly or with how much self-reproach one desires to understand their situation, how meticulously one tries to imagine and infer it from one's own experiences, one has no choice but to watch blindly from the outside."

short, depressing book about Sri Lanka civil war. Author appears to be a wealthy, self-serving ("getting a degree in Philosophy at Columbia, but he's not really interested in philosophy--just a way to remain a student) user of other people's miseries towards his own ends.

A beautifully written story about the life of a refugee in Sri Lanka. I'll admit that for the first couple of chapters I was not really feeling the book. The author takes what most people would consider a simple action and turns it into paragraph after paragraph of description. But then something just clicked and I felt a real connection to the main character and his journey. I highly recommend to give this book a chance if you aren't enjoying it at first.

Dinesh has had everything taken from him including his family, home, and possessions as war takes place in his country. While at a refugee camp he is introduced to a father that asks him to marry his young daughter. This book takes place over the course of one 24 hour period.

I wish I was as good of a writer as the author so I could better describe how much beauty this book possesses despite also showcasing the horrors of war.

I won this book in a giveaway and that is my fair and honest review.

This compelling story of love and death among Tamil refugees during the Sri Lankan Civil War is told in a time defying style that makes the reader momentarily forget what a short period of time actually passes. Stunning.

Free copy from publisher through Goodreads First Reads program.

This sparse yet meticulously elegant debut novel allows the reader walk in Dinesh’s shoes, a Tamil evacuee of the Sri Lankan Civil War for twenty-four hours where life span is measured in minutes.
Three words came to mind when I finished the last page – unflinching, scathing, heart weary.
Unflinching as the author did not allow me from the first page to look away from the intricate steps to perform basic human functions. As I was snuggled comfortably in my bed with my connecting bathroom, I read what goes through Dinesh’s mind as he goes about wanting to have a bowel movement – he needs to find a perfect spot that will not make him a target for violence, needs to prepare the spot and then hope that his body remembers how to defecate as he has not eaten but a few grains of rice in a couple of days.
Scathing in that bombing are a constant several times a day – have dehumanized humanity into a cycle cowing and silence as the author brilliantly uses Dinesh as an “Everyman” to touch the reader’s heart and soul.
Heart weary in that this storyline is being replayed in too many times and places.
I was captured by Arudpragasm’s quiet meditative tone and poetic language that contrasts with the horrific and despair to deliver a powerfully poignant testament to the human spirit.
The Story of a Brief Marriage is an impressive debut and I look forward to reading future works by the author.

Eerie. Brutal. Devastating. Quiet. Hypnotic. Intensely physical. Philosophical. Hyper-aware. All these words describe The Story of a Brief Marriage by Anuk Arudpragasam. The writing is wonderfully detailed in its physical descriptions but is definite not for the squeamish. This bleak book about death set in the Sri Lankan civil war leaves me with a reminder of how precious life is and of how much we take for granted.

Read my complete review at http://www.memoriesfrombooks.com/2016/09/the-story-of-brief-marriage.html.

Reviewed based on a publisher’s galley received through NetGalley.