📖 🇱🇰 #70: Literary fiction from Sri Lanka

Hypnotic prose from Anuk Arudpragasam

Welcome to Bookmarked, a newsletter that tracks my journey as I read one book from every country. I’m reading as much as the rest of my life is allowing me right now—thank you for bearing with me as I slowly get back into my old weekly routine. 💛

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I’ve been meaning to read Sri Lankan novelist Anuk Arudpragasam’s A Passage North since I saw it on last year’s Booker shortlist—and I’m so glad I finally did. A Passage North is a beautifully crafted, soupy, meandering story about a twentysomething Tamil man called Krishan who travels from Colombo to the northeast of Sri Lanka to attend the funeral of Rani, his grandmother’s former carer.

At the beginning of the novel Krishan learns that Rani died suddenly, and possibly by suicide. On his train journey to Rani’s village, Krishan reflects on the circumstances of her life, thinking specifically about the PTSD she lived with following Sri Lanka’s thirty-year civil war and the loss of both her sons.

It was strange to reflect on the fact that Rani was dead… It was strange too to think that after having survived so many shells and so much shrapnel during the end of the war she’d died the previous day in such an arbitrary, almost careless way, her neck broken at the bottom of a well.

As well as posing existential questions about the human condition and how we can live in a world filled with so much suffering, Krishan also reflects on the violent conflict between the Sinhalese-dominated Sri Lankan government and the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam, who had once hoped to establish an independent Tamil state. He pays particular attention to the psychological damage experienced by those who survived the war, like Rani, as well as the guilt experienced by those who were not affected, like him.

The novel’s secondary plot follows Krishan’s meditations on his recent relationship with Anjum, an activist from Delhi who has recently got back in touch via email. Though their relationship was brief it was all-consuming for Krishan, who is very much not over Anjum.

She was… one of those people for whom love, no matter how otherworldly it seemed, was always bound to the so-called real world, a world whose basic structure she could never accept, that she was, in other words, one of those people whose being was so taken up with yearning for another world that no single person, no love or no romantic relationship, could ever fill the absence in her soul.

As a character, Krishan is almost obsessively drawn. We hear every thought that enters his brain. There’s also something hypnotic about Arudpragasam’s prose, which is made up of long, philosophical sentences that span many clauses and never include any dialogue. It’s a dense book, but the intensity of Krishan’s thoughts and the way he pays such close attention to the smallest details make it very readable.

I was especially moved by Rani’s story. Towards the end of the book Krishan describes her as “physically located in a world that was shorn of the people she loved and unable therefore to participate in it,” which I found beautiful and also completely devastating. In short, it’s a brilliant book.

A Passage North by Anuk Arudpragasam (Hogarth, 2021)

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More books by Sri Lankan authors:

• The Story of a Brief Marriage by Anuk Arudpragasam

• A Disobedient Girl by Ru Freeman

• Chinaman by Shehan Karunatilaka

• Ritual by S Ponnuthurai, tr. Chelva Kanaganayakam

• Island of a Thousand Mirrors by Nayomi Munaweera

• Metta by Sunethra Rajakarunanayake, tr. Carmen Wickramagamage

• Funny Boy by Shyam Selvadurai

• Mosquito by Roma Tearne

• Colombo Streets by Thisuri Wanniarachchi

• The Third Woman and Other Stories by Punyakante Wijenaike

What have you read recently?

If you’ve read a brilliant book in translation or you’d like to pass on a recommendation, I’d love to hear about it! For this project, I’m focussing on contemporary fiction and short stories, with a preference for female authors—but I’m always happy to venture further afield for a good recommendation.

You can get in touch by replying to this email or leaving a comment. I’ll be featuring your recommendations in upcoming newsletters, and I’ll keep a growing list here.

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