The Jarringness of Witnessing
Anuk Arudpragasam
Anuk Arudpragasam was interviewed by Kion You for the Los Angeles Review of Books about his novel A Passage North.
“The present, we assume, is eternally before us, one of the few things in life from which we cannot be parted,” begins Anuk Arudpragasam’s A Passage North. This reflective, sweeping tone carries throughout the novel, which flows into a diverse set of themes, such as the memory of the Sri Lankan Civil War, classical South Asian literature, and the ways in which diasporic populations grieve violence in their homelands. The story focuses on Krishan, a young man living in Colombo, who rides a train to northeastern Sri Lanka to attend the funeral of his grandmother’s helper, Rani.”