A review by ergative
The Saint of Bright Doors by Vajra Chandrasekera

5.0

Just superb. The writing was exquisite, with delicately apt turns of phase on every page; the social commentary was sufficiently divorced from direct analogy to western politics that the universalities felt true without being preachy (I don't know if the same would be true for a Sri Lankan reader--maybe in that political context it would feel equally heavy-handed). The plot itself was surprising and unpredictable, yet sure-handed and confident, with a dreamlike sequence in the prison camp that reminded me of that unforgettable sequence of The Left Hand of Darkness when Genly Ai and Estraven are crossing the glacier. The word haecceity was perhaps slightly overused, but otherwise I was incredibly impressed by this excellent novel.