A Passage North: A Novel

"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."