Inevitably, with so many cast members to be explored, some characters end up more fully formed than others, and (as with David Shafer’s politically sympathetic 2015 caper Whiskey Tango Foxtrot), it’s the women who come off worst. There is no question of these people not meeting: the geometry of the novel dictates it. Less pleasingly, the neatness with which the characters are arranged saps some of the tension. The overlapping voices like whispers of other realms – come in London, Paris, France.” The book achieves the same effect, a wave-scanning flicker through the characters’ skulls. “It was like a radio dial between stations,” thinks Victor as he is swept into the crowd with its disparate demands, “the way they chanted and cried. Where Yapa succeeds is in evoking the interconnectedness that the antiglobalisation movement both responded to and attempted to transcend. Only one character – Dr Charles Wickramshaw, the Sri Lankan envoy to the WTO negotiations – exists outside this loop, his efforts to reach his meetings frustrated by the crowd that claims to speak for his country. One of the key protest tactics described in the book is the formation of immovable human circles by locking wrists together inside sleeves of tubing, and the relationships connecting the characters form a closed circle too.
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