Asylum Road

There is a forceful urgency and relevance to Asylum Road. It falls into the same broad category as the recently read You People. Both address questions of identity in a post-Brexit Britain, albeit from different angles. Asylum Road is not always an easy or enjoyable read, but it is utterly engrossing, mesmerising and unrelenting; the sort of work that draws you in and does not let you go. The first-person narrator (partly modeled, one assumes, on Sudjic) undergoes a gradual mental breakdown. Her grip on reality loosens as the world unravels around her. Some of this process is a post-traumatic response (to the breakup of Yugoslavia, its de facto repetition in Britain, and also in her personal sphere via the death of her mother, end of her engagement, and abortion). I was reminded of Plath's The Bell Jar, but also, given the dysfunction between Anya and Luke (her proto-fiancé), of Bowles's The Sheltering Sky. It would also be fair to reference the stream of (modern) consciousness of Ferrante, and Sudjic's dramatic and surprising ending also shares elements of the latter's style. The sense of dread, unease and anxiety evoked by Sudjic is also a function of the question of identity: Anya feels an exile both in Britain and in Serbia (per the film ‘Head-On’). Through this lens, Sudjic can explore the notion of borders or boundaries – between families and nations, but also between control and uncontrol, order and chaos. Would be keen to reread (more slowly), and also to try more from Sudjic. Eight and a half out of ten.

By Olivia Sudjic