SL novelist Anuk Arudpragasam shortlisted for Booker Prize Source:Dailymirror Sri Lankan novelist Anuk Arudpragasam’s “A Passage North” has been shortlisted for the 2021 Booker Prize. The final shortlist of six novels has been revealed for this year’s Booker Prize. The final six includes debut novelist Patricia Lockwood with “No One Is Talking About This”. Damon Galgut makes the list for the third time with “The Promise”, and Richard Powers makes his second shortlist appearance with “Bewilderment”. Also making the list are Anuk Arudpragasam for “A Passage North”, Nadifa Mohamed with “The Fortune Men” and Maggie Shipstead with “Great Circle”. ...

Read More →

Unbearable Reading: An Interview with Anuk Arudpragasam Source:Sundayobserver It is no exaggeration to call Anuk Arudpragasam’s first novel absolutely devastating. The Story of a Brief Marriage depicts Dinesh, a sixteen-year-old Tamil man—and yes, at sixteen Dinesh is in many ways a man, forced into a premature adulthood—in a refugee camp toward the end of the Sri Lankan civil war. Though Arudpragasam’s second book is more removed from the bodily experience of violence as portrayed in his first, the war still hangs heavy over the scope of the new novel. A Passage North, an excerpt from which appeared in the Fall 2019 issue of this magazine, follows Krishan, a Tamil man who grew up outside of the war zone, as he makes his way north from Colombo to attend the funeral of his grandmother’s caretaker. It is an incredibly introspective work. Through the particularities of Krishan’s experience and inner life, Arudpragasam ...

Read More →