Lead Review (The Tree of the Toraja)
- Book: The Tree of the Toraja
- Location: France, Indonesia
- Author: Euan Cameron, Philippe Claudel
The novel opens with the description of how the Toraja on Sulawesi bury their dead within the trunk of a tree, the wood then goes on to grow around the loved ones and embrace their bodies.
The story is written in the first person and therefore almost feels like it is a travelogue cum memoir. These first few pages set the scene and then the writer goes on to ponder life, love and death and all the elements that form a person. People, he says, “are enveloped by the whispers of our ghosts”
Mortality is everywhere and affects everyone. This is a poignant meditation on everyday events and human experience, that is written with subtlety and insight.
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