A Passage North: A Novel
by Anuk Arudpragasam
Buy on AmazonSHORTLISTED FOR THE BOOKER PRIZE • A young man journeys into Sri Lanka’s war-torn north in this searing novel of longing, loss, and the legacy of war from the author of The Story of a Brief Marriage. “A novel of tragic power and uncommon beauty.”—Anthony Marra “One of the most individual minds of their generation.”—Financial Times NAMED ONE OF THE BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR BY TIME AND NPR A Passage North begins with a message from out of the blue: a telephone call informing Krishan that his grandmother’s caretaker, Rani, has died under unexpected circumstances—found at the bottom of a well in her village in the north, her neck broken by the fall.…
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"Anuk Arudpragasam’s first novel, A Story of a Brief Marriage, was a hard-to-read, in-your-face accounting of the horrors of Sri Lanka’s three-decade-long civil war – perhaps the best novel set during that moment in history. That same war plays the backdrop to A Passage North and though the themes are much the same (loss, longing, lost love), the war is behind us here. Shortlisted for the Booker Prize, you can see Arudpragasam’s progression as a writer; the book is mostly inward looking, meditative and completely immersive. He blends the past and present almost seamlessly, making for an even better novel than its predecessor."
NPR Books We Love — 2021 · apps.npr.org