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A review by booklane
A Passage North by Anuk Arudpragasam
challenging
dark
emotional
reflective
sad
slow-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Character
- Strong character development? No
- Flaws of characters a main focus? No
5.0
“It was only when looking at a horizon that one’s eyes could move past all the obstacles that limited one’s vision to the present situation, that one’s eyes could range without limit to other times and other places, and perhaps this was all that freedom was”
A Passage North, the second novel by award-winning and Dylan Thomas Prize shortlisted Tamil Sri Lankan novelist Anuk Arukpragasam, deals with the legacy of the devastating thirty-year-long Sri Lankan civil war, which saw Sinhalese and Tamil as major opponents. The latter were spearheaded by the Tamil Tigers, fighting for an independent Tamil-speaking state in the NorthEast but eventually defeated in 2009 following a massive attack that many equal to a genocide and that ultimately left the country ravaged and wounded.
Grishan is a young Tamil Sri Lankan employed at an Ngo in Colombo, the Sri Lankan capital situated on the southwestern coast. He has returned there from New Delhi abandoning his PhD after a relationship with Anjoum, a woman he met at lgbt events and film viewings. He has always lived far from the conflict but has been drawn back home, partially driven by guilt for having been spared:
“He’d begun to cultivate once, more his sense of having a destiny in that place he he’d never actually lived, fantasising what it would be like to walk over the same land his forebears had, to help create our of near annihilation the possibility of some new and compelling future, as though living a life simplified in the way that only war can simplify he too would be able to find something worth surrendering to”
At the beginning of the novel, a phone call announcing the death of Grishan’s grandmother’s carer Rani prompts a five-day trip to the North-East through a war-ravaged country to attend her funeral. During the trip, through his thoughts and recollections Grishan reconstructs the recent history of “his own poor, violated, stateless people”: a story – as we will learn -- of utter devastation because, apparently, the modern Sri Lankan state can only be built “in direct relation to the evisceration of the northeast”.
But how can you tell the story of something that you have not lived on your skin, of things that are no more, of the aspirations that were annihilated, of monuments that have been reduced to dust along with the memory of what they represent”? Lacking first-hand experience of the conflic, in this compelling narrative Grishan often pieces together his vicarious, mediated experiences reporting his thoughts and visceral reaction: for example, he recounts how he learnt about events immersing himself in diaspora blogs and social media (he tells us of the experience of viewing the mutilated bodies on blogs, of reading about the massive refugee demonstrations and of their odyssey around the world, which is compellingly portrayed), as well as through films, documentaries, books, and the media, all acting as a particular lens. We learn, for example, that Visa Pillayar temple, where people now petition for Visas, has been so labelled by Google Maps. Vision, the possibility to envision a future, the nature of representation and the experience of the direct versus the mediated gaze are prominent themes I found very well developed and particularly interesting: from Grishan’s own experience, to Anjoum’s interest in film and accounts of the threatening male gaze, to the Tamil prisoner who is blinded to deny his only desire to be able to imagine an horizon for his people.
Personal memories and family history find a place, too. While Grishan’s traumatic experience is one of distance, disembodiment and longing to connect, history finds its embodiment in the martyred body of Rani, who is precisely who we are honouring at the end of the trip: prior to her mysterious death at the bottom of a well, she experienced war on her skin, displacement, the loss of her sons and trauma. Her deep depression and psychic wounds resulting in years of electroshock therapy are a living testimony of the horrors of war. Indeed, in this well constructed novel, the symbolical journey through the history of the Tamil people starts with an image of “the painful first moments of entry in the world” with bodies firmly occupying space, and ends with the funeral scene of Rani’s body burning in a pyre, with “ feelings and visions, memories and expectations, all of which would take time to burn, to be reduced to soothing uniformity of ash”, quietly and inexorably vanishing.
The few quotes I have inserted testify as to the beauty and the depth of Arudpragasam’s writing. This is a marvellous read on the different ways trauma affects people, a deeply political novel and a moving love letter to a wounded country: immensely beautiful, original, profound, visceral, meditative, philosophical and a worthy contender for literary prizes. Since it’s dense and slow I would not recommend it to everyone, but if you can make it will be a 5 star experience.
I am grateful to Granta for an Arc of this novel via NetGalley.
A Passage North, the second novel by award-winning and Dylan Thomas Prize shortlisted Tamil Sri Lankan novelist Anuk Arukpragasam, deals with the legacy of the devastating thirty-year-long Sri Lankan civil war, which saw Sinhalese and Tamil as major opponents. The latter were spearheaded by the Tamil Tigers, fighting for an independent Tamil-speaking state in the NorthEast but eventually defeated in 2009 following a massive attack that many equal to a genocide and that ultimately left the country ravaged and wounded.
Grishan is a young Tamil Sri Lankan employed at an Ngo in Colombo, the Sri Lankan capital situated on the southwestern coast. He has returned there from New Delhi abandoning his PhD after a relationship with Anjoum, a woman he met at lgbt events and film viewings. He has always lived far from the conflict but has been drawn back home, partially driven by guilt for having been spared:
“He’d begun to cultivate once, more his sense of having a destiny in that place he he’d never actually lived, fantasising what it would be like to walk over the same land his forebears had, to help create our of near annihilation the possibility of some new and compelling future, as though living a life simplified in the way that only war can simplify he too would be able to find something worth surrendering to”
At the beginning of the novel, a phone call announcing the death of Grishan’s grandmother’s carer Rani prompts a five-day trip to the North-East through a war-ravaged country to attend her funeral. During the trip, through his thoughts and recollections Grishan reconstructs the recent history of “his own poor, violated, stateless people”: a story – as we will learn -- of utter devastation because, apparently, the modern Sri Lankan state can only be built “in direct relation to the evisceration of the northeast”.
But how can you tell the story of something that you have not lived on your skin, of things that are no more, of the aspirations that were annihilated, of monuments that have been reduced to dust along with the memory of what they represent”? Lacking first-hand experience of the conflic, in this compelling narrative Grishan often pieces together his vicarious, mediated experiences reporting his thoughts and visceral reaction: for example, he recounts how he learnt about events immersing himself in diaspora blogs and social media (he tells us of the experience of viewing the mutilated bodies on blogs, of reading about the massive refugee demonstrations and of their odyssey around the world, which is compellingly portrayed), as well as through films, documentaries, books, and the media, all acting as a particular lens. We learn, for example, that Visa Pillayar temple, where people now petition for Visas, has been so labelled by Google Maps. Vision, the possibility to envision a future, the nature of representation and the experience of the direct versus the mediated gaze are prominent themes I found very well developed and particularly interesting: from Grishan’s own experience, to Anjoum’s interest in film and accounts of the threatening male gaze, to the Tamil prisoner who is blinded to deny his only desire to be able to imagine an horizon for his people.
Personal memories and family history find a place, too. While Grishan’s traumatic experience is one of distance, disembodiment and longing to connect, history finds its embodiment in the martyred body of Rani, who is precisely who we are honouring at the end of the trip: prior to her mysterious death at the bottom of a well, she experienced war on her skin, displacement, the loss of her sons and trauma. Her deep depression and psychic wounds resulting in years of electroshock therapy are a living testimony of the horrors of war. Indeed, in this well constructed novel, the symbolical journey through the history of the Tamil people starts with an image of “the painful first moments of entry in the world” with bodies firmly occupying space, and ends with the funeral scene of Rani’s body burning in a pyre, with “ feelings and visions, memories and expectations, all of which would take time to burn, to be reduced to soothing uniformity of ash”, quietly and inexorably vanishing.
The few quotes I have inserted testify as to the beauty and the depth of Arudpragasam’s writing. This is a marvellous read on the different ways trauma affects people, a deeply political novel and a moving love letter to a wounded country: immensely beautiful, original, profound, visceral, meditative, philosophical and a worthy contender for literary prizes. Since it’s dense and slow I would not recommend it to everyone, but if you can make it will be a 5 star experience.
I am grateful to Granta for an Arc of this novel via NetGalley.