Burial Rites

“For every story we hear, there is another side that may be as equally, subjectively true.”

Set in the 1800s in Iceland, the book tells a story of a woman condemned to die for committing the murder of two males. While throughout history, she has been labelled as a cold blooded witch, who planned & murdered two people, the author tries to bring out the narrative of the story from the accused woman's point of view.

History is not infallible, and any narration that is built suffers from inevitable human bias. This being the basic premise, the author never claims to be representing the “correct” story, because when it comes to history, truth in itself is subjective. That being said, I believe the book does justice to the story or the version of it that it tries to bring forth. It evokes just the right amount of sympathy for the accused, while at the same time keeping it open to delibrate the “guilt” of the accused. It also makes you think about the “justice” or “fairness” of death penalty by bring out the thoughts of a person on a death sentence, waiting for execution.

At the end, I couldn't help but question historical representations, and narratives we've been hearing since childhood. While the most popular versions have been accepted as “true”, isn't there still an iota of doubt that history has been corrupted by the bias, prejudices, human selfishness, and prevailing ideologies of the time, and we can never truly know what is true?