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A Passage North

A Passage North

A searing novel of longing, loss, & the legacy of war by Anuk Arudpragasam | Shortlisted for Booker Prize 2021

Anuk Arudpragasam
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A young man journeys into Sri Lanka’s war-torn north in this searing novel of longing, loss, and the legacy of war, from Anuk Arudpragasam, the author of The Story of a Brief Marriage.

Short-listed for the Booker Prize 2021, 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. The news arrives on the heels of an email from Anjum, an impassioned yet aloof activist Krishnan fell in love with years before while living in Delhi, stirring old memories and desires from a world he left behind.

As Krishan makes the long journey by train from Colombo into the war-torn Northern Province for Rani’s funeral, so begins an astonishing passage into the innermost reaches of a country. At once a powerful meditation on absence and longing, as well as an unsparing account of the legacy of Sri Lanka’s thirty-year civil war, this procession to a pyre ‘at the end of the earth’ lays bare the imprints of an island’s past and the unattainable distances between who we are and what we seek.

Written with precision and grace, Anuk Arudpragasam’s masterful novel is an attempt to come to terms with life in the wake of devastation, and a poignant memorial for those lost and those still alive.

Imprint: India Penguin

Published: Dec/2022

ISBN: 9780143460107

Length : 304 Pages

MRP : ₹399.00

A Passage North

A searing novel of longing, loss, & the legacy of war by Anuk Arudpragasam | Shortlisted for Booker Prize 2021

Anuk Arudpragasam

A young man journeys into Sri Lanka’s war-torn north in this searing novel of longing, loss, and the legacy of war, from Anuk Arudpragasam, the author of The Story of a Brief Marriage.

Short-listed for the Booker Prize 2021, 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. The news arrives on the heels of an email from Anjum, an impassioned yet aloof activist Krishnan fell in love with years before while living in Delhi, stirring old memories and desires from a world he left behind.

As Krishan makes the long journey by train from Colombo into the war-torn Northern Province for Rani’s funeral, so begins an astonishing passage into the innermost reaches of a country. At once a powerful meditation on absence and longing, as well as an unsparing account of the legacy of Sri Lanka’s thirty-year civil war, this procession to a pyre ‘at the end of the earth’ lays bare the imprints of an island’s past and the unattainable distances between who we are and what we seek.

Written with precision and grace, Anuk Arudpragasam’s masterful novel is an attempt to come to terms with life in the wake of devastation, and a poignant memorial for those lost and those still alive.

Buying Options
Paperback / Hardback

Anuk Arudpragasam

Anuk Arudpragasam was born in Colombo, Sri Lanka, and moved to the United States at the age of eighteen, where he attended Stanford and Columbia Universities. His first novel, The Story of a Brief Marriage, was translated into six languages, won the DSC Prize for South Asian Literature and was shortlisted for the Dylan Thomas Prize. He currently divides his time between Sri Lanka and India.

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