A Passage North – Anuk Arudpragasam

READ FOR BOOKERTHON

⫸ “I am in NO position to be saying the things I’m about to say as, well, it’s not like I have had a book shortlisted for the Booker Prize: I really like books that have interwoven fiction and non-fiction – for example last year’s shortlisted The Shadow King looked at the Italian invasion of Ethiopia.

“I felt like A Passage North was a half-hearted attempt at this. While the base storyline held my interest I felt like the author’s interspersing of factual information was done in a strange way. Often there were pages and pages of information on the history of Sri Lanka that was just the main character recalling a book he had read or a documentary he had watched. It felt like a lazy tool to educate the reader on information that, while undoubtedly important, would have been more impactful if it was blended more with the characters that I was emotionally invested in as a reader.

“Maybe I am not appreciating the creativity? What right do I have to demand important information to be fed to me in a way that I prefer?

“Overall I felt like these factual asides, while interesting and informative, were a distraction from the main storyline rather than nicely flowing alongside it. In saying that I was very invested in the storyline of the main character, his experiences and relationships.” – Suzy

⫸ “A Passage North is set in Sri Lanka at the conclusion of its long civil war. Tamil Krishan is back from studying overseas and is contacted by his former girlfriend, an activist called Anjum, whom he still loves. The book is a study of not only Tamil and Anjum’s relationship but of Sri Lanka’s war-torn past and Tamil’s experience of it and in it.

“While I appreciate the author’s investment into recording an important part of history, I found the prose too over-written for my liking. The protagonist tells his stories with such detail and passion and some of those moments are poignant and affecting, but others are not, like when two men on a train simply look at each other for paragraphs on end, and every assessment of the look is discussed, and the ways in which the look could be interpreted are drawn out. Sometimes this kind of intensity is profound and sometimes it’s distracting. Tamil’s narration was very observational too so while the plot was moving along I felt a little removed from it.

“Arudpragasam is clearly a talented writer. He has produced meticulous characters and provided them rich and layered experiences. I can see why the book was an attractive pick for the Booker judges as the author has pushed out the traditional scope of a novel, but the style of prose means it pushed me out too.” – Rachel

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Published 2021
Hogarth Press
304 pages