In Italy, Neela had a job, a daughter, a home—in that order, but without any of the three truly belonging to her. (...) She had applied herself with unflagging constancy to fashion a new shell; certain things are not learned through the eyes, but with the gut. Behind that thick layer of greasepaint, Neela felt inhabited by a monstrous underworld pressing to surface, which she relentlessly forced back down.

After many years in Italy, after a lifetime of toil, she had some money, which in Ceylon, her native land, afforded her a solid financial standing. She decides, then, to return home. This choice appears incomprehensible to her relatives in Ceylon—a country devastated by civil war, military repression, mounting poverty, and the fallout of climate change: a country vastly different from the one Neela had left behind, now transformed by Western patterns of consumption and by new beliefs and customs. The author is not interested in Neela's future, whose life seems dictated by the immutable fate of the emigrant. The novel's central theme is the impact of this departure on Ayesha, Neela's daughter, the "dirty water"—so called because she has become Italianized, while remaining in search of a link to the past, both her own and that of her family. These two existential dimensions are not approached through a predictable sociological lens revolving around the question of identity. With great narrative dexterity, the writer unfolds the chronicle of Neela’s family and that of Ayesha in parallel; unlike her mother, Ayesha cannot return; unlike her aunts and cousins, she cannot place her trust in ancient remedies, in the wisdom of a magical world still populated by spirits and Buddhist rituals, nor lean on anti-colonial and revolutionary ideologies. Where are the roots of a "dirty water" to be found, obliged to survive within a post-capitalist society? Fond of metaphors, the author turns to the image of tropical trees that grow from seeds

that burrow into the cracks in the bark of other trees, choking the host with their own roots. (...) The relationship I wove with my life elsewhere was like this: an existence growing atop another like a parasite. While one sought to take over, dragging along its roots, exposed like raw flesh, the other, underneath, continued to survive on the verge of rot. I felt like a Persephone dividing her time between two worlds. She had sold herself for six pomegranate seeds; what had I sold myself for?

The suspicion often arises as to whether Uyangoda is actually speaking of Italy, using Ceylon just as Montesquieu wrote of France by imagining a Persia that existed only in his Persian Letters. One derives the same impression when reading Igiaba Scego, particularly the latest book reviewed on this site: Cassandra a Mogadiscio. While it is true that the most captivating section of the novel consists of the chapters devoted to Ceylon, the author invariably brings us back, with unsparing starkness, to the existential and psychological drama of Ayesha: a woman so close to us, yet so distant because she is "dirty water." And it is precisely in this "coming and going," between an idealized island and our own daily alienation, that the substantive weight of the novel resides.

The narrative structure is well crafted, relying on the first person when dealing with Ayesha, while shifting to the third person to chronicle the family histories: this approach generates a peculiar alternation between the subjectivism characteristic of the contemporary novel and the objectivism that arises from an urge to address the world and "universal" existences. The prose is fluid yet dense; one senses a philosophical undercurrent, especially in certain passages rich in meditation and abstraction. All of this enhances the allure of the reading experience. The plot cannot help but be fragile, given that everything has already been laid bare from the opening sentences of the book.

Why read it? A demanding, yet fascinating novel.

Dirty water