In a world plagued with wars yet obsessed with “fast news”, we often take
little time to explore the stories that remain after the bombs stop. Yet, these
meditations on guilt, loss, trauma, and ultimately, life after the war are what
reveal the humanity shadowed by violence.
اضافة اعلان
A Passage North is Anuk Arudpragasam’s — a Sri
Lankan writer of Tamil heritage — second novel. The novel was set in the
aftermath of Sri Lanka’s bloody civil war (1983–2009), where the Tamil Tigers
were fighting for an independent state in the face of the government’s
continuous discrimination and violent persecution.
In the wake of the
government’s victory, Krishan, a young Sri Lankan man of Tamil heritage, who
lives in the southern city of Colombo, received a phone call to be told that
his grandmother’s former caregiver, Rani, had died. And so begins Krishan’s
journey to the war-scarred North for Rani’s funeral. At around the same time,
Krishan also receives an email from his former girlfriend Anjum, an Indian
activist whom he clearly still loves. This is no spoiler, and thankfully, this
is not a plot-heavy book but rather one about the nuance of life.
The book
undoubtedly has political intent, but this political vividness does not come
from the dramatization of violence; although descriptions are present, they are
more honest meditations from a narrator trying to navigate the systematic
destruction of the Tamil society.
Arudpragasam writes tenderly and lightly, creating space for readers who enjoy sifting through memories and understanding how the past shapes our present.
“There were so
many diasporic Tamils who haunted the internet … people who’d left or fled the
country … people who spent their free time trying to convince themselves that
their pasts on this island really had taken place, their memories more than
fantasies or hallucinations, representing people and places that really had
taken up space on earth,” the book said regarding witnessing the violence, as a
Tamil from afar.
However, thinking
of the novel as a mere “political object” to understand the aftermath of the
30-year civil war would be overlooking its mastery and why it was shortlisted
for the Booker Prize 2021.
Arudpragasam
writes tenderly and lightly, creating space for readers who enjoy sifting
through memories and understanding how the past shapes our present.
The novel puts
every action, thought, and dialogue under a microscope. It focuses on observing
and noticing the small things that fester in our everyday lives.
“Even though
nothing exactly had happened, even though their conversation about the film had
been abstract and unrelated to their relationship, it was as if each of them
had sensed that some turning point had been reached.”
Through
disentangling his thoughts relating to the relationship with his former lover,
we can understand the anxiety and insecurity of new loves and the pleasure when
one begins to feel solitude and self-sufficiency outside of a partner.
A Passage North is
full of melancholy. However, it is not a melancholy that leaves you desponded,
but rather one that leaves you carefully wondering. Arudpragasam creates,
through Krishan’s thoughts, feelings that leave you more deeply connected with
the beauty of every day.
Some sort of
survivor’s guilt torments Krishan’s character for not having been affected by
the civil war in the way in which Rani has, and it is through her story that
Krishan tries to come to terms with his Tamil heritage while being outside of
the war zone.
Divided Sri Lanka is present throughout, but so too is the divided self that many of us struggle to contend with.
Arudpragasam draws
out notions of longing, shame, and desire, all while creating an atmospheric
sensory description that leaves the reader feeling as though one is smoking a
cigarette with Krishan in Colombo or on the train with him and Anjum through
India. This attention to detail to everyday lives means that even when
Arudpragasam makes declarations about the human condition and the things
universally shared, it does not feel out of reach or philosophical but rather
revelatory and coated in disbelief that one has not yet observed this in their
own life.
Divided Sri Lanka
is present throughout, but so too is the divided self that many of us struggle
to contend with.
This novel is
intelligent, rewarding, and due to its slow nature — pleasurable. This is a
powerful meditation on longing, grief, and how the past seeps into our present.
I hugely recommend enjoying it in the afternoon in the sun.
It is not prior to bed
read as your mind needs time to muse over the deep thoughts that Arudpragasam
leaves you with.
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