AWW22 A Passage North - Anuk Arudpragasam

Chaired by Smriti Daniel


Anuk Arudpragasam’s first book, The Story of a Marriage, earned
him comparisons to W. G. Sebald and Primo Levi. His second, A
Passage North, earned him a Booker short-listing. In it, Anuk
explores the emotional scars from an individual’s lost love and a
nation’s devastating civil war. Beginning with Krishan learning
of the death of his ailing grandmother’s former caretaker, and
ending, two days later, with him watching her body burn on her
funeral pyre, his journey in between is a profound meditation on
suffering and on the divided nation of Sri Lanka itself.