The Story of a Brief Marriage

I was reading this book at the same time images of the little boy injured in the bombing of Aleppo were all over the media. In the same way those few seconds of video crystallized the trauma war inflicts on civilians, this visceral, philosophical novel—which covers one day in the life of a refugee during the relentlessly violent end of the Sri Lankan civil war—packs into less than 200 pages not only the injuries but all the things war wrests away from people. Dinesh has lost his relationships, possessions, and finally his emotions and language. When he agrees to a desperate father's request that he marry his daughter, he takes the chance to recall his past and tentatively envision a future: that is, to become a human.