Prisoner #1056: How I Survived War and Found Peace

In this underwhelming debut, Ratnavel, an executive at Canada’s largest asset management firm, charts his path to career success after surviving the Sri Lankan Civil War. As a teenager, Ratnavel was imprisoned by the Sri Lankan army for several months in a bogus attempt to attach him to the Tamil Tigers, a liberation-minded terrorist group. At 18, after managing to reach his uncle from prison, Ratnavel was released and left home to join family in Canada. Immediately upon arrival, he received news that his father, who arranged for him to leave Sri Lanka, had been killed. Ratnavel writes of being inspired by his father’s wisdom, intellect, and pride in his Tamil heritage as he navigated an unfamiliar culture and rose through the business ranks. Though Ratnavel’s personal story is powerful, he undercuts it with middling prose and lectures that feel reductive at best: “[Canada] has transformed from a bulwark of a free and color-blind society into a Social Justice utopia whose only inputs are skin color, gender, and race, and whose only outputs are grievance, division, and victimhood,” for example. Personal intrigue aside, excessive moralizing make this a slog. Agent: Michael Levine, Westwood Creative Artists. (Apr.)