Anuk Arudpragasam

“Very seldom in a reading life does a novel alter your sense not only of literature but of the world. This extraordinary debut is of that class." —Garth Greenwell, author of What Belongs to You Two and a half decades into a devastating civil war, Sri Lanka’s Tamil minority is pushed inexorably towards the coast by the advancing army. Amongst the evacuees is Dinesh, whose world has contracted to a makeshift camp where time is measured by the shells that fall around him like clockwork. Alienated from family, home, language, and body, he exists in a state of mute acceptance, numb to the violence around him, till he is approached one morning by an old man who makes an unexpected proposal: that Dinesh marry his daughter, Ganga. Marriage, in this world, is an attempt at safety, like the beached fishing boat under which Dinesh huddles during the bombings. As a couple, they would be less likely to be conscripted to fight for the rebels, and less likely to be abused in the case of an army victory. Thrust into this situation of strange intimacy and dependence, Dinesh and Ganga try to come to terms with everything that has happened, hesitantly attempting to awaken to themselves and to one another before the war closes over them once more. Anuk Arudpragasam’s The Story of a Brief Marriage is a feat of extraordinary sensitivity and imagination, a meditation on the fundamental elements of human existence—eating, sleeping, washing, touching, speaking—that give us direction and purpose, even as the world around us collapses. Set over the course of a single day and night, this unflinching debut confronts marriage and war, life and death, bestowing on its subjects the highest dignity, however briefly.

A Novel

The Story of a Brief Marriage

Celine

What dying meant there was no way he could really know of course, it was a subject, he was not in a position to think about clearly. It depended probably on what living meant, and though he had been alive for some time it was difficult to remember whether it had meant being together with other humans, or being alone with himself above all.

more than simply having spent a lot of time with them. Being close to someone meant the entire rhythm of that person's life was synchro- nized with yours, it meant that each body had learned how to respond to the other instinctually, to its gestures and mannerisms, to the subtle changes in the cadence of its speech and gait, so that all the movements of one person had gradually come to be in subconscious harmony with those of the other. Two people truly close to each other were two bodies fully in tune with each other.

Just as another person might in the same kind of situation say that a part of themselves was dead, though physically they were perfectly intact, meaning only that a person around which an entire aspect of their lives had grown and entwined had been taken away, leaving this part of themselves togo limp or atrophy

He could endure to some degree her thinking of him as fragile or as incapacitated, it wasn't pleasant but he had no choice, but what he couldn't bear was having to look her in the eyes while she was dwelling on such thoughts simultaneously, in the same way, perhaps, that if someone opens the door without warning while one is changing one's clothes one finds it impossible, in that moment, despite being confronted by their immediate presence, to look the person in the eye. Making eve contact at such times gave you no choice but to see yourself through the eves of the person looking dt you, to acknowledge things you were ashamed of that till then you a managed to hide from yourself or ignore, and in such situations there- vas mperative, even before attempting to cover up one 's nudity, 

What is there to be happy or sad about? Dinesh's arms loosened very slightly around her back. Things just happen and we have to accept them. Happiness and sadness are for people who can control what happens to them.

The atmosphere entered the body of its own accord, and in the same way it took its leave, from the first breath to the last, and so perhaps in a way living was not a choice. The air would go on advancing, and till it stopped it would go on receding. When you were hungry you would have to eat, and when you were thirsty you would have to drink. When your bladder was full you would have to piss, and when your bowels were full you would have to shit. The legs had to move, and so people had to go places, and so there were places they went. The arms had to work too, and so people had to carry things, and so there were things they gripped and held. All the while the atmosphere kept advancing and receding, the chest kept rising and falling, and maybe that was all, maybe that was life. 

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