Anuk Arudpragasam A Passage North, a novel (2021)
Ashok Ferrey The Ceaseless Chatter of Demons (2016)
Shehan Karunatilaka The Seven Moons of Maali Almeida (2022, winner of the Booker Prize)
A Passage North is a beautifully written story about longing, self-reflection, and coming to terms with the past and how things are now. We accompany the main character Krishan while he travels into Sri Lanka’s post-war north-east. During the 2-day trip from Colombo, he has the space to take stock of how Sri Lanka’s violet recent history has influenced his recent decisions as well as the course of his life in general. The story begins with a message out of the blue: a telephone call informing Krishan that his grandmother’s caretaker, Rani, has died under unexpected circumstances. Her family found her at the bottom of a well in her native village in the north, her neck broken by the fall. Krishan decides to attend the funeral. While sitting on the train, his thoughts meander between the past and the present. We learn a lot about the 30 year-long civil war in Sri Lanka, which, as the story unfolds, has barely come to an end (it officially happened from 1983 to 2009).
Shehan Karunatilaka as well works through the brutalities of the civil war in The Seven Moons. Maali Almeida—war photographer, gambler, and closet queen—has woken up dead in 1990 Colombo in what seems like a celestial visa office. His dismembered body is sinking in the serene Beira Lake and he has no idea who killed him. In a country where, at the time, i.e. during the civil war, scores are settled by death squads, suicide bombers, and hired goons, the list of suspects is depressingly long, as the ghouls and ghosts with grudges who cluster round can attest. But even in the afterlife, time is running out for Maali. He has seven moons to contact the man and woman he loves most and lead them to the photos that will rock Sri Lanka. Communication with the real world is complicated. Maali nevertheless manages to save his friend, roommate, and sometimes lover from torture and annihilation through brutal state officials who act like beyond-the-law mafiosi. The dreamlike state Maali floats in, being dead, makes the helplessness and frustration one feels in the face of arbitrary, unfair brutality by the state palpable.
Living in Sri Lanka, particularly in the north-east, has become unbearably difficult or even impossible. Many were murdered, like war photographer Maali, many others left the country, like Krishan, who started his university studies in Delhi, far away from his family in Colombo. There he meets the fascinating, powerful, somewhat mysterious Anjum. They begin a passionate relationship. Arudpragasam manages to make Krishan’s mind trips haptic, his insecurities of how to approach Anjum, by whom he is fascinated. She is fierce in how she fights for her convictions, a powerful character. During his long trip north, we follow these thinking processes, becoming sharper as sentences grow longer and more precise. As Krishan's thoughts run along, in these long sentences, I understood better and better how and why he made his decisions, like why he left Delhi after the break-up with Anjum go work in the post-war Sri Lankan north-east. His mother is Tamil, this personal background and his guilt at having been spared influencing Krishan’s motivation to go work there before returning to his family in Colombo. When he receives the news of Rani’s passing, he had only just gotten an email from Anjum, after years of silence, stirring old memories and desires from a world he left behind. So he relives their time together, which was intense and their comradeship deep, their passion constant. I found it difficult to accept that they broke up, Anjum prioritizing her freedom over their relationship. Maybe I misread, but for me their being together, so compatible on many levels, did not interfere with their individual freedoms and desires. Krishan has accepted things the way they are. More so, he has made a life for himself without Anjum. Arudpragasam makes all these thoughts visible, in a graceful, precise and sharp, meditative language, we follow Krishan as he becomes clearer on who he has become, accepting that there are unattainable distances between who we are and what we seek. A quiet, meditative read also of harsh topics.