Point of View

The novel is narrated from the perspective of Benjamin, Sarat’s nephew, who recounts Sarat’s story many years after the war. While the novel is set in the near future, the author skillfully oscillates between the past and the present, using the narrator’s memory as a way to move between them. This allows for the novel to be told in hindsight, at times allowing the narrator to reveal long-term consequences or outcomes while the story is unfolding. Yet the narrative style fluctuates between a first person narrator, during which Benjamin relays his personal experiences and impressions, and a third person omniscient narrator that explores different characters’ thoughts with recourse to free indirect discourse. In the final chapter of the novel, the reader discovers that Benjamin was given access to Sarat’s diaries, and that he builds his narrative on the information that he...