Vajra Chandrasekera

If postcolonial urban fantasy is your bag, you can’t do much better than The Saint of Bright Doors, the debut novel of Sri Lankan author Vajra Chandrasekera. The first sentence tells you what the novel’s uncanny world is like: “The moment Fetter is born, Mother-of-Glory pins his shadow to the earth with a large brass nail and tears it from him.” This shadowectomy gives him an unusual relation to gravity and several other occult powers. His mother raises him to be an assassin, show more destined, she says, to kill her and his father, the sainted Perfect and Kind. His father tells him that those we perceive as devils are actually “people of lost histories” that we can only see in translation and that we “must know how we are fettered if we are to become free.” Because “Fetter isn’t even the only feral child of a messiah in his social network,” he is well equipped to start a revolution. show less

A mesmerising fantasy about a young man raised to kill his immortal, all-powerful father, which gives him a lot to talk about in his support group of fellow (un)Chosen ones. Vajra Chandrasekera draws on recent Sri Lankan history, Buddhist mythology, and pandemics, to tell a story about totalitarianism and colonialism and erasure and queerness and parental control and the push-pull of destinies. There were undoubtedly connotations and references I didn't pick up on here, but I was swept away show more by Chandrasekera's lived-in world-building, his command of prose, and the assurance with which he sets up tropes and expectations only to take them out at the knees. The way the ending is like a cinematic push out shot, reminding you of how much bigger the world is and how much you and the characters don't/can't know... Chef's kiss.

This isn't the book for you if you like more traditional Chosen One narratives or plot-driven books. However, if you want something that's pushing at the genre foundations of fantasy, and like stories that have a hyperreal/dreamlike quality to them, I really recommend giving this a try. show less

This is an odd, unusual debut fantasy novel, difficult to summarize. It mostly takes place in a city in a fantasy realm; the main character is seemingly the son of a god, but has been cast off by his parents. I don't want to say a whole lot about it, because I think it's one of those books that doesn't really benefit from being summarized ahead of time, just read.

I will say I think it feels like three different novels—one about the cast-off son, one about the city and the titular "bright show more doors" (which are a fascinating fantasy device), and one about a prison camp. Did the three novels totally go together? I wasn't always sure; it sometimes felt like they were getting in each others' way. There's a lot of cool stuff here about how we define and categorize the world and other people and ourselves, the tools of oppression and comprehension we wield and the way we push against that, from epic stories to pogroms to plays to identity cards to religion to crowdfunding campaigns.

The writing is beautiful. There's a particularly evocative section about the main character in prison that I just loved. I think, more than any other book I've read recently, it would benefit from being reread. Now that I have a sense of what it's doing, would it hang together more? I admire this book a lot; I love parts of it. show less

Oh my heckin gosh, this was a ride! Page 282 and suddenly what I thought I knew was twisted up, but that's a theme throughout-an the novel anyway - about myth-making and truth in stories (rumors, gossip) - and a bit of Granny Weatherwax's theory of narrative causality, that people are driven by the drumbeats of a story to an inevitable conclusion, even though they believe themselves to be in charge of the telling.

The writing style is musical at times, breaking out into rhythms of three or show more more, linked by "or", which I found to be so evocative. The setting, too, is rich urban fantasy inspired by South Asia, which sets it apart from so many others published in the US. (I hope this means we see more, from English writers or in translation, as a result of the popularity of this one.)

Two of my very favorite books are The Raven Tower (Ann Leckie) and If on a winter's night a traveler... (Calvino), so it's probably not a surprise that I love The Saint of Bright Doors and Chandrasekera's take on stories and truth. I honestly suspect I'm missing some of the symbolism and other themes, because of my deep interest in storytelling and myth-making, but they are there - not least about colonialism, race and class and the rule of law, or the power of government or even its attempts at power in the face of its own impotence.

But also, in summary, just wow, what a novel! show less