Why a Booktrail?
2000s: A story of obsession, love and art set in Tuscany, Sri Lanka and London.
The Road to Urbino
What you need to know before your trail
Ras is a Sri Lankan who fled his country as a child following the violent death of his mother and his father’s disappearance. He remains haunted by these events and moves to the UK. However, in London, he has committed a crime and is awaiting trial for stealing The Flagellation, by Italian Renaissance artist Piero della Francesca. He gets to know an art curator Charles and their paths will cross in unexpected ways.
Ras’s story and that of his chief witness, novelist Alex Benson, and Charles Boyar, an art critic becomes a story of many strands and will take them all on a journey of many dark secrets.
Travel Guide
Jaffna
The story opens in Jaffna, the war-torn Northern province of Sri Lanka. The author herself, Roma Tearne is originally from this country and is half-Tamil and half-Sinhalese so the tragedy and isolation of racial violence is one felt acutely in her novels
Ras himself is a Tamil orphaned by the war and in a storyline which mirrors that of the author, he flees to Britain in search of refuge. His early childhood in Sri Lanka, is one of tragedy and unimaginable grief. This is the country where his father disappeared and his mother died in a bomb blast. The next years of his life therefore were spent in a Tamil detention centre, with all the brutality and isolation that an existence here entails. Fleeing to England is his best chance of survival in every sense of the word. Working at the National Gallery in London furthers his story – http://www.nationalgallery.org.uk/
This emigrant experience, both in Sri Lanka and London is the hallmark of this novel Ras’ life is one of confusion and regret – having to flee your homeland can never be an easy choice and when your elder brother supports the Tamil Tiger cause, life can never be ordinary.
The Art World – Urbino
The road to Urbino – for Urbino is where the painting of the Flagellation by Piero Della Francesca is located – is a long and ardous one. Lola for example, Ras’s half-Tamil half-English daughter, states that `Western art is white elitist art’.
The idea is that art is open to those who open their minds – those who are willing to walk the road to Urbino. When Ras steals the painting, he does so to call attention to the suffering of his people. The world he says looks away like the people in the painting but he wants people to see. As does the author.
“I was fed up with reading how Sri Lanka was the number one holiday destination. Oh darling if you only knew”
The art world links are continued to London and the National Art Gallery.
Streetview Maps
A) Sri Lanka - Jaffna Fort
E) Italy - Urbino
Where Next?
