Brotherless Night

Wow! Amazing writing and what a story. This is the story of a young teen (Sashi) whose family is ripped apart by the 25 year civil war in Sri Lanka. Some of her brothers join the rebellion; some die at the hands of rebels or government forces. I really felt the emotional toll on Sashi. Her story is well written and at times hard to read because the sorrows and horrors of living in a war zone never lets up. And it's also hard to read sometimes because of its brutal honesty – including ambiguity of conflicting emotions, beliefs within a person. It’s about her experiences and internal struggles navigating through a civil war and its impacts on her family. It’s a coming of age story regarding morals.

We know this is a novel. The people show more aren't real. In fact, some of them remain a bit obscure in order, I think, to represent any people in any conflict. But the particulars of this conflict -- the events portrayed in the novel -- are real. The book often reads like a memoir.

This book grabbed me from the first sentence and never let me go. show less

What a fantastic book. Set in Jaffna, Sri Lanka, it tells the story of Sashi and her four brothers who along with the rest of her family were caught up in the civil war between the Sinhalese and Tamil people. It is a story of a family slowly being dragged into the war, whether they wanted it or not, and the destruction this brings to the family and to the country.

At the start of the book Sashi is 16 and wants to be a doctor, working and studying hard. Her eldest brother is killed during an anti-Tamil riot and so her two brothers Seelan and Dayalan join the Tamil Tigers. But they are not the only ones and a friend, K, asks Sashi one evening to help save a colleague who has been shot. This she does even though she is only a first year show more medic and she is then drawn into the Tamil Tiger hospital to work. Three children now involved with the war and only one left at home refusing to become a part of it. Sashi discovers that she can disagree and argue with her father, unacceptable in Tamil families, and many painful truths are spoken.

What is so good about this book is that we are given the contradictions and other side of the argument, often in the same character. Sashi wants to help people at the hospital, to do no harm but she also helps out because she is in love with K. Eventually, she teams up with her professor and starts to write reports of atrocities from both the Sri Lankan army and Indian peacekeepers with first hand accounts, checked and verified so that they will be remembered and can be called on later down the line.

The book is a fictionalisation of events but the fictionalisation is more to do with the characters rather than the events. It is written by a journalist and I think you can tell, but it has such compassion when telling what are horrific events. I have to say that at points I thought I was reading a memoir and had to check that it was fictionalised. It is a book that shares the nuances of war rather than the black and white responses often seen.

Definitely one for the book club list. show less

Brotherless Night tells the story of Sashi, a medical student, and her family, including four brothers, who are caught up in the unrest, violence, and ultimately, war in Sri Lanka in the 1980s. They are Tamil in a majority Sinhalese country. Sashi adores her brothers, three of whom become involved with the organization working for Tamil independence.

This book was a bit out of my typical comfort zone, but it is good to mix it up once in a while. A fictional account that reads like a memoir, It is a tough story because so much of what occurs is not fiction. It really happened and continues to happen all over the world as in so many cases the revolutionaries fighting for independence turn out to be as dangerous as the oppressors as does show more the outside forces that intervene.

This account of man’s injustices to his fellow man is beautifully written and engrossing. The author writes of unimaginable atrocities with sensitivity and pathos. Despite the wrenching honesty of the novel, the strength of those who survive is powerful and somehow uplifting.

It is an important book and should be read. show less

The Sri Lankan Civil War began in 1983, with the Tamil Tigers rebelling against violent persecution and demanding the creation of an independent state. The government defeated the Tamils in 2009. The war resulted in thousands of casualties, both military and civilian, often through terrorist acts. Families were displaced, and some people suddenly disappeared, detained by the authorities. Homes were invaded and set on fire, often with loss of life. Young Tamil men were recruited by the movement and left their families to fight, becoming what today we would call “radicalized.”

Brotherless Night is a vivid, gripping depiction of a Tamil family during this period. Sashi lives with her parents and four brothers (three older, one show more younger). She is studying for her A-Level exams and hopes to follow her oldest brother to medical school. The war intervenes, drawing the family into the conflict. While Sashi is eventually able to continue pursuing her goal, she follows a winding and unconventional path that brings her into direct contact with the movement and acts of resistance and protest. Meanwhile every young man she knows, including her brothers, are swept up in the struggle, and Sashi and her family experience unimaginable loss.

I was impressed with the storytelling in this novel and it was hard to put down, but it was also relentless in its unflinching portrait of one modern-day war, which is probably similar to others happening today. I found myself working hard to maintain emotional distance because it was just too much. But I learned a great deal and am glad I read it. show less

The author won the 2024 Women’s Prize for Fiction for this book; I certainly understand why.

The novel is set in Jaffna, Sri Lanka. It focuses on 1981 to 1989, the earlier years of the Sri Lankan civil war between the Sinhalese-dominated government and Tamil separatist groups. The narrator is Sashi Kulenthiren, a Tamil, and the only daughter in a family with four sons. When the novel opens, she is sixteen and an aspiring doctor. One brother is killed in anti-Tamil riots and then two others join the militant Tamil Tigers. Once in medical school, Sashi’s friendship with K, a high-ranking member of the Tigers, leads her to become a medic in a Tigers’ field hospital, but she starts to question her role in the war.

I knew little about show more the Sri Lankan civil war, though I did know that the Tamil Tigers have been designated a terrorist group by several countries, including Canada. The book opens with Sashi addressing this issue; her opening sentence is “I recently sent a letter to a terrorist I used to know” and the first paragraph ends with her admission that she was once “what you would call a terrorist.” Her goal is to tell the story behind that label, to show that terrorists are made, not born. She emphasizes that in war people’s choices are often dictated by outside forces.

The minority Tamils are discriminated against and persecuted under majority Sinhalese rule so the emergence of groups like the Tigers fighting for a separate Tamil homeland is understandable. But then the Tigers, in order to establish their prominence, turn on other militant groups and civilians who for any reason are seen as a threat or disloyal. The killing of a respected teacher because he organized a cricket match between the boys of his school and the army team illustrates the extremism. The novel clearly shows that atrocities are committed by all involved in the war. Sashi embarks on documenting human rights violations committed not just by the Tamil Tigers, but by the Sri Lankan army and the Indian peacekeepers as well.

No side emerges as heroic. What is emphasized is the effects of war on ordinary people and families. Sashi’s family is torn apart, and she loses more than one loved one. As a medic, she sees how civilians suffer; her description of the rape of one young woman is horrific and heart-breaking. By recording the intimate and personal lives of people caught up in the war, the novel emphasizes the impact of war. Including the perspective of women adds to the novel’s effectiveness.

Several times, the narrator directly addresses the reader: “Imagine the places you grew up, the places you studied, places that belonged to your people, burned.” I see these direct pleas as challenging readers to have compassion for those caught in the middle of a war and to look for the truth behind the “official” stories told by the opposing sides of a conflict. Though the book is about the Sri Lankan civil war, the reader will clearly see parallels with what is currently happening in Ukraine and Gaza.

This is a coming-of-age tale, but it’s not just Sashi who learns and matures. The reader learns about the Sri Lankan civil war and is left pondering the answer to Sashi’s final questions: “Whose stories will you believe? For how long will you listen?”

Note: Please check out my reader's blog (https://schatjesshelves.blogspot.com/) or substack (https://doreenyakabuski.substack.com/) for over 1,100 of my book reviews. show less

Evil is not limited by what you can personally imagine.
from Brotherless Night by V. V. Ganeshananthan

Brotherless Night is a shattering novel. It reads like a memoir, the narrator’s voice so direct and real, or a journalistic retelling of a true story. I have read books that touched on the Sri Lanka Civil War between the majority population Sinhalese and the Tamil minority. Ethnic violence by the Sinhalese against the Tamil resulted in a backlash; the Tamil Tigers arose, over time becoming equally as fearsome in their civilian attacks. Boys were taken hostage, forced to serve in the army of one side or the other. India’s peacekeeping force tried to disarm both sides; the Tigers attacked them with suicide bombers. The conflict went on show more for decades.

In this novel, I was transported deep into the experiences of civilians who are inspired to action, either to defend their people or to serve all people. They witness first hand terrorism and suffering, all the horror of war. Friends turn on friends, student against teacher, siblings are divided, families displaced.

The novel begins before the war when Sashi and her brother and his friend K are preparing to study medicine, meeting up at the library. When the beloved older brother is killed in an attack, two of her brothers and the friend join the Tamil Tigers. When the Sinhalese round up village boys and takes her youngest brother, her mother and the woman of the village gather in protest. “What will we do when the men are speechless,” the leader cries out, demanding the boys’ release.

Sashi wants nothing more than to heal. She is drawn to volunteer in a Tamil field hospital, treating cadre and civilian victims of the war. Faced with one moral choice after another, Sashi is drawn into overt and covert activities. When a patient, a victim of a horrific attack, wrecks her revenge in a dramatic way, Sashi is moved to become political.

Hundreds of thousands of civilians were caught between the armies while the United Nations and the world watched without sending aid.

Ganeshananthan’s novel is hard to put down and hard to read.

I received a free egalley from the publisher through NetGalley. My review is fair and unbiased. show less

A gift from a cousin in Sri Lanka, a propos a conversation about 'The Seven Moons of Maali Almeida'. It was tough reading, particularly the Black July passage, since I was there but younger than the narrator, Sashi, and I had a British passport.

Sashi's experiences and internal struggles with how to navigate her way through civil war gave a tremendous insight into the situations of Jaffna civilians that I'd wondered about for years. My missing fifth star, rating however, is because I would have welcomed deeper insight into the Black Tigers - the female suicide bombers - who were rather fleetingly referenced in the light of Priya's pregnancy from rape by soldiers, and in fact deeper insight into children's experiences at the hands of the show more LTTE than Aran's story gave. There is only one focal woman character, aside from Sashi, who is painted in a controversial light - her anatomy partner - and her portrait is very sketchy.

Perhaps Sashi is meant to be an unreliable narrator - and there are hints in the book that this is a possibility - taking her place in unreliable reporting alongside the news broadcasts at the time, the UN and others. I kind of hope so, as that would be an interesting and not inappropriate twist. I was left with an odd feeling of an over-sanitised telling of the war through Sashi's eyes and journey, in spite of all the horrors, violence and disregard for family and friends her 'reports' depict.

The conversation at the UN in 2009 is intriguing. I remember wondering how the final bombing could have gone on for so long in such a small area in the north of the island, and why no one internationally would intervene for the non-combatants. Ganeshananthan's vivid description of hands across water and bullets in the front and back rang true, and it's the trauma of the end of the war that stopped me visiting the north untl this year - when at last there woud be 16-year-olds who haven't lived through the war.

I'll probably re-read this another year, as overall I did find it a compelling read, and I'm curious to see what the author will publish next. show less