The novel, written between 2011 and 2014, describes a day and a night in the lives of two young Tamils, Dinesh and Ganga, who are forced into a marriage as the Sri Lankan army intensifies its bombardment of the camp on the north-eastern coast where they are taking refuge. "I grew up in the south of Sri Lanka in a well-off family, as insulated as someone could be from the war," Arudpragasam told Guernica magazine. "It was an attempt to cross certain kinds of differences in experience between myself and these many other people in the north of the country who I had become separated from."[2]
Reception
Randy Boyagoda of The Guardian wrote it as "A debut novel which raises timely questions about how we regard the suffering of others",[3]Bárbara Mujica of Washington Independent Review of Books wrote "Still, The Story of a BriefMarriage is a worthwhile read. It turns our focus not only on the brutality of war, but also on the blessing of life.",[4] Novelist Colm Toibin praised Arudpragasam's dense and attentive style: "Every image in the book, including the most desolate, is rendered with precision and an aura of pure truth and tenderness.",[5] Neera Majumdar of ThePrint wrote "The Story of a Brief Marriage is delicate, unsparing, and depicts the Sri Lankan civil war through the lens of the mortal human body."[6] Arifa Akbar of Financial Times wrote "A remarkable debut novel about a young Sri Lankan couple at a time of bloody civil war".[7]
The book was listed as one of the best novels of 2016 by The Wall Street Journal,[8]NPR,[9] and the Financial Times.[10]
