RaveThe New York Times Book ReviewThe novel starts off slowly, but this only mirrors the motions of an aircraft: taxiing before taking off at full speed. And when the narrative does take off, the ride is a smooth one: Anyuru’s prose is incandescent, effortlessly navigating the turbulence in his hero’s life. The story frame is tight, focusing on a few months of P’s incarceration and his subsequent exile, but it opens out into a sophisticated meditation on politics, race and ethnicity ... Reconstructing P’s journey is arduous since his escapades include acts of erasure to evade capture. Anyuru describes these maneuvers with authenticity and integrity: It’s in understanding P’s own path that the author is able to map out his own.
