War and terror with pleasantries

THE spirit of Joseph Conrad hovers over “The Unyielding Clamor of the Night,” the new novel from Canadian writer Neil Bissoondath, who gauges the twin plagues of our time: terrorism and political violence. The setting is an unnamed Southeast Asia island loosely modeled on Sri Lanka (which, once again, is making headlines as a decades-old civil war threatens to reignite), but Bissoondath evokes a struggle generic enough in its contours that it takes on a universal dimension; the unrest and grim cycle of retribution he details brings to mind just about any of the flashpoints that wrack the globe today. Though the book has elements of a thriller, and a boy-falls-for-girl subplot is thrown into the mix, there’s no summer escapism here: Girl may or may not be a bomb maker.

Arun, an idealistic (if slightly naive) young teacher, leaves his prosperous family -- his father is a printer -- in his country’s northern capital and travels south, to the homeland of a despised caste known as the “two percenters,” who are squeezed by a deadly vise -- caught between the military and a shadowy rebel group known as “The Boys.” Arun has hopes about improving the lives of his students, but his idealism is slowly tempered by the dire situation in Omeara, the troubled coastal town where he takes up residence.

This is a classic wrinkle, the teacher who himself is schooled by intractable reality. The schoolhouse is in bad shape, and the condition of the few students who show up for class is even worse -- some are missing arms and legs, all are destitute. Arun puts on a brave face, but he grows more and more unsettled by his new world. A vague unease, an “iridescent sense of strangeness,” permeates the dense tropical air: “[T]here was something to which he could put no name, an unseizable edge that was both unsettling and attractive. It was as if every familiar colour were shaded in a subtly different tone, as if every familiar leaf and flower were cast in a minutely different form.”

Arun gropes to apprehend these distinctions, and his search for clarity, for illumination, becomes one of the controlling metaphors of the book. Bissoondath is an old-fashioned writer -- his prose is orderly, well-behaved, classical in its restraint, but he tends to drench his story in atmospherics that are laden with Meaning. He continuously plays light and dark off one another in swirling patterns of cinema-ready imagery (“In the distance, across fields razed of all obstruction, the lights of the camp glowed like a giant flare brought to earth, electric white fringed in electric blue. As they drew closer, the glow revealed rows of razor wire curled like breaking waves across the fields.”) Things aren’t what they seem in Omeara; everyone has secrets. Danger lurks everywhere -- Arun is nearly killed by a bomb blast at an open-air market, and a suspected army informant is savagely dealt with. It’s all very unpleasant stuff.

Arun’s new friendships -- with an army captain, Seth, and a butcher, Jaisaram and his daughter, Anjani -- complicate things further. Arun has always held himself aloof from his country’s troubles, but his personal entanglements force all kinds of unpleasant truths upon him.

Illumination only brings danger and discomfort. The army, he learns, is more ruthless than the rebels it’s battling; it treats the two percenters little better than animals. Seth rebukes Arun for his sensitivity; he must grow up and learn “how not to let the darkness in.” But, as Bissoondath hints, that darkness may be impossible to keep out; it may very well contain the truth, however unpleasant. Arun refuses to comply with Seth’s counsel, defiant but unsure where his defiance may lead. As Arun draws closer to Anjani, whose high spirits and sassy pluck intimidate at first but ultimately prove hard to resist, she teases, “I think you’re one of us at heart.” (“One of us” is one of Conrad’s great refrains and loyalty a great Conradian theme.)

Like the children he teaches, Arun is also missing part of a limb -- a withered leg was amputated in childhood. Arun learns terrible truths -- it turns out his father, killed in an unsolved bombing of an airliner, had nasty dealings with the army, a revelation that helps drive Arun to extreme measures.

In his depiction of sinister forces battling in the shadows, of a relentless sequence of escalation and reprisal, and sheer hopelessness, Bissoondath certainly wants to say something about our unfortunate times.

Yet for all this, “The Unyielding Clamor of the Night” is curiously flat in its effects. Seth is right out of central casting, as is a callous general with a fondness for cigars and brandy. Bissoondath’s serene diction is, well, too well mannered, too pretty to convey the terror that swirls around Arun. You never quite feel it. If it’s blood and raw fear you really want, just turn on the news.

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Matthew Price is a journalist and critic in Brooklyn, N.Y.