The Gift of Rain by Tan Twan Eng

 

This is a beautifully novel about the pain of war, and the conflicts between duty and desire--at least, that's the surface story. Under that, there's a stream of self-justification--mostly on the part of people other than the POV, though he comes to believe it--based on reincarnation and fate; there's a scene near the end of the novel, in one of the brief stretches in 1995, where the character who triggers the extensive flashbacks that make up the vast majority of the novel makes it clear that predestination in Western (or at least Christian) thought is the same thing. What the novel's really about, though is the need to tell, and the potential healing power of telling; the difference in the POV/narrator's attitude in the epilogue/last chapter is the key, here--telling his story did more for his peace of mind than anything that might have anything to do with any putative past lives, or any putative fate.