{"product_id":"the-story-of-a-brief-marriage-by-anuk-arudpragasam","title":"'The Story of a Brief Marriage' by Anuk Arudpragasam","description":"\u003ch4 data-start=\"55\" data-end=\"692\"\u003eA devastating, controlled first novel set over the course of a single day in a civilian camp during the final stages of the Sri Lankan civil war.\u003c\/h4\u003e\n\u003cp data-start=\"55\" data-end=\"692\"\u003eDinesh, young, exhausted, and half-detached from himself by trauma, is approached by an older man with a proposal. He is to marry his daughter, Ganga, in the hope that some formal relation might offer her a little protection. From this almost impossible premise, Arudpragasam builds a novel of extraordinary stillness.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp data-start=\"694\" data-end=\"1176\"\u003eThe title is very exact: this is a marriage, but also barely one; a story, but one that keeps refusing the false comfort of narrative shape. Arudpragasam’s prose is patient, lucid, bodily, philosophical — interested in what it means to remain alive when history has reduced life to its smallest actions. For readers of Michael Ondaatje, Jenny Erpenbeck, W. G. Sebald’s moral attention, or novels that treat political violence without turning it into either melodrama or abstraction.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp data-start=\"1178\" data-end=\"1520\"\u003e\u003cstrong\u003eFirst UK edition hardback, published by Granta Books in 2016. First printing. Signed\/inscribed by the author on title page. Dust jacket present. Good second-hand condition.\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"bower studio","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":45705564094547,"sku":null,"price":35.0,"currency_code":"AUD","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0689\/0268\/2707\/files\/thebowerbooker-2026-06-16T194936.269.png?v=1781603900","url":"https:\/\/bowerbooks.com\/products\/the-story-of-a-brief-marriage-by-anuk-arudpragasam","provider":"bower books","version":"1.0","type":"link"}