River of Ink

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I hope enough people understand that the softer, quieter things are really important,” she says, “and much more powerful and enduring than the bombast and spectacle and the noise. The poems included in the book, Asanka’s talk of poetry and the mysterious tales he receives make up the part I admired the most.

Characters chase memory through the novel, trying to wrap their hands round one solid version of their history, their past: story of a love affair, story of a conqueror, a people, a country. And thus starts the story of a poet, forced to pledge allegiance to a tyrant usurper, having to translate a work from a foreign land, using that to defy the king in his own way. Magha can’t do this, not really, which makes for one of the most affecting portraits in the book: the utter loneliness inherent in power through control, in denying one’s vulnerability.From the first few words of the first chapter, I was immediately transported to a time and place that was unknown to me. And it ends with his words rallying up the bent and broken common folk, getting them behind a rebel army, eventually driving the king away. Under the new regime, executions and bloody slaughter are daily events, and no one, from the lowliest farmer to the highest court official, is safe.

and so every few chapters you get a mini story, that is one of these texts and it was a nice way to break up the narrative as well as adding another layer/dimension to the poem that Asanka is translating, which was also intriguing to read about! The name refers to any bird in the starling family in the Indian subcontinent, partly due to the fact that said family (Sturnidae) came to that area on two separate occasions during their evolution.This, the book suggests, may be what makes it invincible – it is at once intangible and unbreakable as mountains, and it always has room for a joke you don’t get. Poetry has its own timeline, anyway; like a temple, or a sea, and also kind of like memory, it’s chained onto the past and yet every encounter creates a new now. At its roots its a love story too, that of a tragic ending, making it all the more believable given the circumstances. I swam in the depths of the lotus pool, and then it was a pool of ink, then a river, drenching my robes, filling my lungs, my eyes, with its haunting smell.

Considering this isn't as action packed as the books I usually read, that kept me enthralled more than anything! This venture has introduced me to far off lands, fresh viewpoints, and many new authors I might not have discovered otherwise.As he struggles to translate the epic, Asanka finds himself giving the epic’s demon king the features of King Magha, first the heavy eyebrows, then more and more detail until the poet loses all restraint and sets the king and his gods up for ridicule.

Meanwhile, Asanka attempts to use his precarious protected status to procure safety for his beloved mistress, Sarasai.The exhibition has toured regional galleries since November 2021 and is now at Sydney’s Manly Art Gallery and Museum before its final leg in Melbourne in November. When a mystery teenage boy emerges from the River Thames drenched, distressed and unable to remember anything about himself, he becomes the focus of worldwide media speculation. I also loved the way the power of the written word came through in this book and how people can rally against a cruel leader. As a specialist in Sri Lankan history and literature from this period, I can vouch for the fact that he gets most things right.