Life is short but remembering is long. In the aftermath of war, Anuk Arudpragasam's rich, rewarding sentences return the reader to all that is living
Amitava Kumar Anuk Arudpragasam is an artist of revelations. In A Passage North, he continues to map, with beauty, grace, and fire, the responsibilities we carry in a world that is forever on the ... Read morebrink. This is a novel as both an elegy and a love song, not only for a place, but for the souls, living and dead, who are bound to that place-what an unforgettable and perfect reading experience, and one that unearths truths, relentlessly, magically
Paul Yoon Anuk Arudpragasam's A Passage North is a profound and disquieting account of the making of a self, of the pressures of history, desire, will, and chance that determine the shape of a life. It's difficult to think of comparisons for Arudpragasam's work among current English-language writers; one senses, reading his two extraordinary novels, a new mastery coming into being
Garth Greenwell, author of Cleanness and What Belongs to You Mesmerizing, political, intimate, unafraid - this is a superb novel, a novel that pays such close, intelligent attention to the world we all live in
Sunjeev Sahota
A Passage North is written with scrupulous attention to nuance and detail. Its world is the deeply-layered, rich interior of its protagonist's mind but also contemporary Sri Lanka itself, war-scarred, traumatized. While the narrative is filled with images of violence and loss, at its center is an exquisite form of noticing, a way of rendering consciousness and handling time that connects Arudpragasam to the great novelists of the past
Colm Toíbín A novel of tragic power and uncommon beauty. In his depiction of the processes through which history sculpts human fate, Anuk Arudpragasam achieves something akin to grace I am also pasting below the full round-up of praise, which is mostly American, but I am still hoping that some of my Brits might come good...
Anthony Marra, author of A Constellation of Vital Phenomena A beautiful, urgent novel of displacement, love and atrocity set on a single long journey. Arudpragasam has achieved something extraordinary here - a philosophical novel that draws you in through the sheer depth and elegance of its ideas and expression until you feel like you're stowing away in the protagonist's mind
Luke Kennard Anuk Arudpragasam has a graceful way of unfolding a sentence to its fullest dimensions. Concerned with whether and how the calamitous forces of love and trauma can be accommodated among life's daily exigencies, A Passage North is a novel of consciousness alert to the turning of history and the micronavigations of bodies in a room. I've rarely read something so exquisitely alive
Naoise Dolan A novel of philosophic suspense, one whose reader shivers in anticipation not of what will happen next but of where the next thought will lead... A luminously intelligent, psychologically intricate novel-slow in always rewarding ways
Kirkus
A young man ruminates about Sri Lankan history and his own life in the introspective latest from Arudpragasam...Readers who enjoy contemplative, Sebaldian narratives will appreciate this
Publishers Weekly
The author of The Story of a Brief Marriage casts a spell in his sumptuous new novel... reminiscent of Michael Ondaatje's Anil's Ghost
Oprah Daily's Best Books of July
Profound... hypnotic... Arudpragasam explores the desire for independence that enflamed the decades-long civil war, the violence that ensued and the emotional scars that refuse to heal
Observer
It can take just two novels to establish a writer as one of the most individual minds of their generation... With his new novel, a revelatory exploration of the aftermath of war, Arudpragasam cements his reputation... [An] extraordinary and often illuminating novel
Financial Times
A disquieting and contemplative book that seeks to comprehend the incomprehensible... With considered thoughts on everything from smoking to meditation, life and death, [Arudpragasam''s] new novel is a treasure trove of insight and wisdom, a reminder of "how large and unknown the world was, how much it seemed to contain"
Irish Times
A beautiful, meditative book... so moving
Literary Friction
It is an incredibly introspective work. Through the particularities of Krishan's experience and inner life, Arudpragasam seamlessly unfurls ruminations on intimacy, trauma, and the passage of time
Paris Review
Arudpragasam is a patient and meticulous observer.
Guardian
A Passage North is a singular novel by a singular writer and richly deserves its place on the Booker longlist... His prose manages that paradoxical feat of feeling urgent without seeming in a hurry. The long sentences, the free-associative paragraphs, the digressions into general subjects, all add up to something that is, for once, greater than the sum of its parts
Telegraph
A sinuously discursive meditation on a nation's collective trauma... elegiac
TLS
A book of striking, fluid elegance... Arudpragasam's technique [...] is the strongest and most considered on the [Booker Prize] shortlist
Spectator
An arresting and poignant reflection on the legacy of civil war
Books of the Year
Financial Times
The individual and collective trauma of Sri Lanka's drawn-out civil war thrums as a backbeat through this Booker-shortlisted second novel... A thoughtful, introspective novel that journeys inwards, even as it traverses physically scarred landscapes
Books of the Year
The Times and Sunday Times
A haunting work about the power of memory and how we learn to see the world
100 must-read books of 2021
TIME
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
NPR
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