His spare, meditative writing lets the pain and delirium of conflict unfold, sometimes just through an injured bird.”Īuthor and translator Sattar and poet and novelist Jeet Thayil chose this year’s Shakti Bhatt First Book Prize shortlist from forty-seven titles submitted for consideration. Mohan, winner of the Shakti Bhatt First Book Prize 2015, for her own Sri Lanka-based novel The Seasons of Trouble, said, “Anuk has taken what is actually a sliver of a story, the briefest of moments, and suffused it with meaning. Shamsie added, “It’s an exceptional accomplishment for any writer - for a debut writer it’s near miraculous.”

The Story of a Brief Marriage is mesmerizing from the first paragraph, and remains delicately poised between life and death from beginning to end,” said Mascarenhas. Editions for The Story of a Brief Marriage: 1250072409 (Hardcover published in 2016), (Kindle Edition published in 2016), 1250075270 (Paperback published.

“Anuk Arudpragasam has written an extraordinary novel that is timely, timeless and universal in its depiction of the possibility of tenderness and love blossoming in the midst of the mind-numbing carnage, suffering and horror that is war. Judges Kamila Shamsie, Rohini Mohan and Margaret Mascarenhas were unanimous in their decision. It sings not as testament of glory but as a dirge of despair. The story is about the human spirit in the most desperate of times. Imminent death and constant loss raise the stakes of this tentative connection between strangers who might save each other. Writing from within the debris of Tamil lives in prose that can pierce your heart, Arudpragasam’s protagonists find dignity as they piece together strategies of survival. The Story of a Brief Marriage is a delicate, detailed examination of the old boy-meets-girl story, told in the context of a refugee camp in the midst of a civil war. Anuk Arudpragasam’s novel The Story of a Brief Marriage has won the Shakti Bhatt First Book Prize 2017.Ī native of Colombo, his work, according to shortlist judge Arshia Sattar, “presents the civil war in Sri Lanka like never before.

The story of brief marriage