ARC Review: Half Gods by Akil Kumarasamy

A startlingly beautiful debut, Half Gods brings together the exiled, the disappeared, the seekers. Following the fractured origins and destines of two brothers named after demigods from the ancient epic the Mahabharata, we meet a family struggling with the reverberations of the past in their lives. These ten interlinked stories redraw the map of our world in surprising ways: following an act of violence, a baby girl is renamed after a Hindu goddess but raised as a Muslim; a lonely butcher from Angola finds solace in a family of refugees in New Jersey; a gentle entomologist, in Sri Lanka, discovers unexpected reserves of courage while searching for his missing son.

By turns heartbreaking and fiercely inventive, Half Gods reveals with sharp clarity the ways that parents, children, and friends act as unknowing mirrors to each other, revealing in their all-too human weaknesses, hopes, and sorrows a connection to the divine.

Disclaimer: I was provided with a Physical copy of the book by Harper Collins India in exchange for an honest review. However, all the thoughts, feelings and opinions expressed in this review are my own.

Half Gods is a collection of short stories interlocked with each other but with a common foundation of hope, despair and faith – with a startling look at the consequences of war on the human psyche.

All the stories also have the one theme in common – all their lives have been influenced by the long lasting civil war in Sri Lanka – it’s about the consequences of fleeing that war, which has its own intended consequence on the psyche of the person and the consequence of staying in a country where you are either unwelcome in the country you call home or are discriminated in the country where you were supposed to find refuge – and the long lasting effects of this on their future generations.

The author has done a brilliant job describing in stark detail of the raw, unadulterated fear combined with the hope through different eyes and experiences that stay with you long after you are done with book – there is no order to the stories, they are messy but what part of life isn’t?

And the author definitely delivers in a way that sticks with you, if you keep an open mind.