CASUALTIES OF TRUTH by Lauren Francis-Sharma - New Yorker 'Briefly Noted'

New Yorker | March 24, 2025

Casualties of Truth, by Lauren Francis-Sharma (Atlantic Monthly). “Memories were dangerous things, grenades with shaky pins,” Prudence—a wealthy housewife, and the central character of this pointed novel—reflects, after a man from her past reappears and forces her to relive long-suppressed experiences. Twenty-two years earlier, Prudence spent time in South Africa, observing Truth and Reconciliation Commission hearings. The horrors she was made to confront, however, transcended the courtroom in which the sessions were held. The story, alternating between two time lines, tests the limits of forgiveness and explores the boundary between resistance and revenge. “Violence? What is violence?” Prudence once asked her therapist. Now, faced with an impossible decision, she learns how “very violent a person might become to maintain their hold on life.”

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