A young Tamil ponders the death of his grandmother\u2019s carer in a hypnotic novel about ageing, longing and the aftermath of war<\/p>\n
In Anuk Arudpragasam\u2019s remarkable debut, The Story of a Brief Marriage,<\/a><\/em> <\/em>set in the north-east of Sri Lanka during the final months of the civil war,<\/a> his young protagonist is, in the midst of conflict, trying to survive against all odds. His latest novel, A Passage North<\/a>,<\/em> is another profound meditation on suffering but, this time, Arudpragasam\u2019s Tamil narrator is at a distance, struggling with survivor\u2019s guilt and war\u2019s aftermath.<\/p>\n In 2009, Krishan is studying for a PhD in Delhi and watching the news unfold in his home country: \u201che immersed himself in all the images and videos he found \u2026 to reconstruct the situation from which he\u2019d been spared.\u201d The end of his relationship with Anjum, an activist, prompts him to return to work in Jaffna, where he had \u201cenvisioned participating in some kind of dramatic change \u2026 after all the pain and grief\u201d. Instead, Krishan discovers \u201csome forms of violence penetrate so deeply into the psyche that there was simply no question of fully recovering\u201d.<\/p>\n