Book of the Week: U.X.O. by Brannavan Gnanalingam
All narratives are acts not only of remembering but of forgetting: of the replacement of experiences by the stories we bring ourselves to tell about them. The narrator in U.X.O. constructs a series of ‘drafts’ about his experiences as a Tamil Indian member of the Indian Peace Keeping Force that committed atrocities against Sri Lankan Tamils during the Sri Lankan Civil War (1983—2009). Each draft comes out as a slippery amalgam of confession and denial, and, although ostensibly at attempt to tell about his experiences as a soldier for his grandson’s school project in Aotearoa, the trauma of the narrator’s complicity exerts such pressure on his texts that the results are something else entirely. Formally inventive, deeply considered, and beautfully written.
“In U.X.O. Gnanalingam cuts to the heart of conflict and war crimes, drawing on UN reports and family history, as well as literature and analytical histories. This is a novel with rich characters, writing that grabs you and doesn’t look away from the violence: its consequences for both victim and perpetrator.” —Stella