| The Saint of Bright Doors | |
| Author: | Vajra Chandrasekera |
| Country: | Sri Lanka |
| Language: | English |
| Genres: | |
| Pub Date: | 11 July 2023 |
| Isbn: | 9781250847386 |
The Saint of Bright Doors is a 2023 fantasy novel by Sri Lankan author Vajra Chandrasekera.[1] The novel follows the story of a man trained from a young age to assassinate a prominent spiritual leader, in a fictional city with supernatural "bright doors".[2] [3]
Aigner Loren Wilson of Lightspeed identified themes of "generational, religious, and political trauma" in the novel. Sally Adee of New Scientist described the "deepest theme" of the novel as "the nature of memory and how it can be abused."[4]
In a Literary Hub podcast, Chandrasekera described the novel as "very much a book about history and the way histories are formed, structured, organized, and recorded," adding that there was a "blurring of history and mythology" which can be "highly politically significant depending on whose mythology is being forced onto who."[5]
Writing for The New York Times, Amal El-Mohtar called the novel "the best book I’ve read all year," saying that it was a "casual challenge to what a fantasy novel could be" and "manages to pinpoint the peculiar insanity of our modernity."[6] Jake Casella Brookins of Locus said that the book was "a hard book to talk about... There is so much going on here, and yet it all fits together perfectly – book of the year material, no question," adding that it "deploys some truly huge ideas in how it plays with the writing and rewriting of history and culture" and that had a striking "commitment to the revolutionary impulse and societal critique."[7] Aigner Loren Wilson of Lightspeed described the novel a "a slow beautiful burn of wonderful city descriptions and magical mysteries" that wasn't "as dark as I was expecting."[8] Publishers Weekly reviewed the novel as "a lyrical but sluggish fantasy," saying that it was a "meandering meditation on mind-body duality, fanaticism, and eschatology that will appeal only to fans of the most cerebral fantasies."[9]
In 2024, the novel won the Crawford Award for fantasy literature.[10] It was nominated for the 2024 Hugo Award for Best Novel,[11] was listed as a New York Times Notable Book of 2023,[12] and won the Nebula Award for Best Novel of 2023.[13]