The Premise
Sayeed, a middle-aged Muslim, lives in poverty near a city, where he works as a porter at a hospital. During a visit to his home town, Sayeed's relatives reveal a plan that promises major changes for his solitary, demanding life.
In Review
I found this book on a table of other remainders, all packed together spines-up in no particular order. The unpronounceable name caught my interest, and a closer look revealed that the story is set in the Middle East, and deals with the intersection of tradition and change; my interest deepened. I had recently finished Khaled Hosseini's splendid novel, The Kite Runner, as well as Salman Rushdie's Midnight's Children, and had decided to read more non-Western writers. The book in my hand presented a good opportunity, and so I brought it home.
To my delight, I discovered that Mirage is a powerful, beautiful novel: powerful, because it suggests the existence of a Fate that lacks compassion or mercy; and beautiful, because it is written in prose that describes the story without excess or embellishment. All is told with dry precision, so that all can be seen and heard and tasted and smelled and felt without word-packed impediments and contrived metaphor. The story is not like anything it unavoidably is. To read it is to connect flesh to printed words, emotion to dialog, Fate to the will of a skilled writer.
I am, quite simply, astounded by this novel. The story is simple, and has been told countless times before. The prose is plain, and at times, even awkward. Yet this novel stands out amongst the many that crowd around it not due to the presence of a device or theme, but rather the absence of something that many other books share: convention. Chandraratna is not recycling a plot or a set of characters, he is telling a story with the spontaneity that accompanies the act of artistic creation.
This is a story that comes alive through language, and impresses you with its vitality. You cannot guess what will happen next, what a person is going to say, or what will happen to them. Events happen because they do, not because the plot dictates their passage. A character speaks, and the words don't sound like genuine speech, so much as a literary translation of the emotions they brought into the conversation. A sense of dread appears, and grows in strength as Change enters the story. Its source is untraceable, its intent a mystery, its presence frightful. The question of whether or not if will fall lingers, and remains unresolved until the very moment of discovery.
Who is this Chandraratna? A man who sat down to write, and through his labor, the words that make up this novel appeared. Is this some form of Magic, drawing power from the mundane, bewitching Spirit through the manipulation of terrestrial elements? Is this the potency of story, the power of a skilled writer, or some concoction combining the two? Here are pages full of words that describe a fictitious story and do so much more; somehow, these tangible inscriptions lead you to vast tracts of the intangible.
This is a novel that reminds me why I must read.
Looking at the book now, I am amazed. It is so small, so unassuming. What other books are out there, looking just as ordinary, holding contents that will worm their way into my brain, and leave a lasting mark? What other authors am I passing over, sadly ignorant of what I'm missing? Do they, too, rest spine-up on a remainder table, overshadowed by a towering sign that advertises a sale and implies that these goods were unwanted? What discoveries lie beneath browsing eyes and fingertips, locked by our own summary judgments and self-blinded eye?
I do know this: Chandraratna has published a second novel, An Eye for An Eye, and it, too, tells a story about Sayeed. I will seek this novel out, and read it the moment I bring it home.
8/27/06
