Book review: The Prisoner of Paradise

They say in true simplicity lies the greatest complexity, and nowhere is this more evident than in Romesh Gunesekera’s fifth novel, “The Prisoner of Paradise”.

In many ways, this is perhaps the most cinematic of the works by a British author who was born in Sri Lanka and raised in the Philippines, and whose inspirations range from James Joyce to Milan Kundera to Gabriel Garcia Marquez.

Unlike Gunesekera’s earlier novels, “The Prisoner of Paradise” is set in an actual island — early 19th century Mauritius — instead of the fictional paradises of “Reef” or “Heaven’s Edge” that closely resemble Sri Lanka.

The first half of the novel is spent in an elaborate exposition of its protagonists and the setting. In 1825, Lucy Gladwell arrives from England to live with her aunt and uncle in a palatial plantation house in Mauritius, and regards her expatriate life as the key to an emancipated womanhood and all-consuming love as described in the works of her favourite Romantics.

Instead, she is confronted with a newly acquired class-driven British colony still recovering from the vagaries of Dutch and French rule. It’s an island full of discontent and colonial exploitation that challenge her idealistic beliefs — it’s a world where her uncle George dispenses justice with utterances such as “that little sambo needs a good whacking”, where Indian “coolies” fight for livelihood with the gradually disappearing African slaves, where Asian traders aspire to emulate the ranks of British gentry at the cost of their dignity — while the indifferent British genteel society focus on arranging elegant tea parties, manicuring their precious gardens every day and maintaining Victorian decorum.

When a brash Ceylonese translator accompanying an exiled Sinhala prince further upsets her moral righteousness with his chauvinistic views, Lucy’s yearning for perfect love finds a passionate but contrarian release — she feels immensely drawn towards the “highly disagreeable” Don Lambodar, and despite her “abhorrence of his opinions”, she finds “something compelling about him”.

With great attention to detail, Gunesekera thus builds up a world where people from Madras and Malabar mingle with the ideology of Adam Smith while the poetry of Keats recurs as a romantic refrain.

The second half of “The Prisoner of Paradise” is a distinctly racy read.

The relationship between Lucy and Lambodar plays out as a love-hate tango, recalling more Blake than Keats: “Attraction and repulsion, reason and energy, love and hate, are necessary to human existence.”

Debates on freedom further highlight the chasm between the two worlds: while Lucy boldly proclaims that a human being’s “proper place is to be unshackled” and “only a criminal should be confined”, the more pragmatic Lambodar retorts that a horse should race rather than be set free and the slave be forever enslaved “only if it is their proper place”.

Sublime discussions between the two on equality and independence are underpinned by a brooding sexual tension that finally dissolves in a tragic climax: the sea that brought Lucy Gladwell to the shores of a new life now takes it back in the aftermath of a hurricane, leaving Lambodar with unrequited love and a line from “Endymion” as the first line in a letter she had wanted to hand him over: “Hopes beyond the shadow of a dream.”

Familiar Gunesekera themes abound in this novel: identity, exile, uprooted protagonists, clash of cultures and values, racial prejudice and an unspoilt paradise that gradually descends to chaotic ruin in course of the great churn of history.

But with “The Prisoner of Paradise”, Gunesekera also takes us back to the golden age of the well-made novel: the intricate plot, the exquisite and elegiac prose, the blooming romance, the sea as a protagonist and precursor of things to come, the uprising of indentured labour and the hurricane that provides the perfect denouement, and the undertone of violence that explodes at the end with catastrophic consequences for all.

Gunesekera’s stated inspirations notwithstanding, “The Prisoner of Paradise recalls Hardy, Dickens and Jane Austen more than any post-modern or magic realist author or work.

A sunrise on the tropical island, for instance, becomes a cadenced celebration of senses in the hands of Gunesekera: “The birdsong laced the sky in a tapestry of sound; melodies that burst the octaves she had always thought were the limits of harmony. Cocoroos punctuated by coos and tweets; a chorus of pips and purls and curls and caws. Sunlight streamed in through the slats of the shutters.”

There’s also the signature Gunesekera humour: “The sun reached deep below her skin like the tongue of an inner flame. The air uncoiled. She wanted to shed her nightclothes and fly out of the window. Instead she slipped into her lightest summer dress and went downstairs to the morning room.”

At times though, especially in the first half of the book, it seems that Gunesekera strives for perfection over passion, and compromises what Keats — so often quoted in the novel — called an artiste’s “remarkable restraint”.

But he makes up for it with his masterly craftsmanship: the legend about the tomb of Virginie and her unrequited romance with Paul as described by Monsieur Bernadine de Saint-Pierre early on in the novel turns out to be a leitmotif that reinforces the unravelling plot.

“Great art,” Gunesekera said in an earlier conversation with Weekend Review, “endures not due to any one aspect of the work or of the situation, but because of its supreme values. That’s why the works of greats such as Homer, Shakespeare and Joyce endure.”

In this book, it’s quite evident why the Booker-nominated Gunesekera is a master of his craft. Above all, however, “The Prisoner of Paradise” stands out as a simple celebration of the art of the novel and its enduring appeal through the ages.