Anuk Arudpragasam

A story of age and youth, loss and survival that builds into a magisterial reckoning with mortality from a prize-winning Sri Lankan Tamil author.

A Passage North

sina (she/her) 

It was often hard, he'd read somewhere, to convince a person who'd had a serious car accident to get back into a car, many such people preferring to take other modes of transport whenever they could from then on, and if this was the case with car accidents then how much harder must it have been to convince people to remain in places they'd been bombarded by shelling, places they'd come face-to-face with punctured bodies and severed limbs? Even if they were the only places they'd ever known, places their forebears had lived and that they themselves had never imagined leaving, how was it possible to convince such people not to risk their lives going elsewhere, not to attempt migrating to countries that seemed, in their minds, far removed from these sites of trauma, even if they knew they were likely to die in the process and even if they knew, in their heart of hearts, that most people in places like Australia and America and Europe would never let them live in their countries with full dignity?

The trauma Rani had suffered during the war was, for better or worse, part of her ordinary life, something she couldnt help thinking about or reacting to, whether she was waking up, eating, performing her duties, or sleeping, and it had been foolish of him to think it belonged to some separate sphere. Trauma for Rani was something that had to coexist with all the various exigencies of daily existence, and precisely for this reason she couldn't afford to treat it with the same weight or seriousness that he did. 

Such anxiety was, of course, experienced to some degree by every person newly in love, by every person who finds in another a bliss or rapture that they were unaware till then was possible and that they became terrified, having expe- rienced, of losing.

Events take place, moods ebb and flow, people and situations come and go, but looking back during these rare junctures in which we are, for whatever reason, lifted up from the circular daydream of everyday life, we are slightly surprised to find ourselves in the places we are, as though we were absent while everything was happening, as though we were somewhere else during the time that is usually referred to as our life.

Finally done with 'A Passage North' - don't get me wrong, the book itself is good and you learn a lot about the history and ongoing struggles in Sri Lanka, which I appreciated. It's really a shift of perspective, for me at least. The main character was a bit narcissistic, which was a bit distracting. 

For me, the style of writing was challenging - the sentences often stretched across half/ full pages and while I appreciate the prose, being descriptive, using metaphors, just very skillful writing, I had to focus a lot to not get lost on the page, and at times having to go back to restart the sentence. 

Despite this, I'd recommend reading this book as you get to take a look at a very different reality and outside westernized history books. 

Finally done with 'A Passage North' - don't get me wrong, the book itself is good and you learn a lot about the history and ongoing struggles in Sri Lanka, which I appreciated. It's really a shift of perspective, for me at least. The main character was a bit narcissistic, which was a bit distracting. 

For me, the style of writing was challenging - the sentences often stretched across half/ full pages and while I appreciate the prose, being descriptive, using metaphors, just very skillful writing, I had to focus a lot to not get lost on the page, and at times having to go back to restart the sentence. 

Despite this, I'd recommend reading this book as you get to take a look at a very different reality and outside westernized history books. 

A Passage North

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