Brotherless Night: 'Blazingly brilliant' CELESTE NG

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I was entirely ignorant of events in Sri Lanka and I am ashamed now to remember being mostly annoyed by the inconvenience of being unable to get around freely. In “Brotherless Night” this pain is strikingly brought to life through the eyes of Sashi, a beautifully realized character who reminds us horror is often suffered by humanity in places not necessarily illuminated by our newsfeed or social media trends. Brotherless Night is my favorite kind of novel, one so rich and full of movement that it’s only later I realize how much I have learned. This novel did a good job of explaining what it would be like to live in a civil war, faced with impossible choices to make. Over one million were killed and millions of Sri Lankans, mainly minority Tamils, were displaced as refugees both inside the country and abroad.

Life in an underground bunker: "When we ran to the bunkers we tried to remember to carry our torches so that we could check for snakes. As the story opens in 1981, we meet its narrator, Sashi, a 16-year old Tamil girl living in Jaffna, Sri Lanka.The Sri Lankan Civil War has been covered time and time again in contemporary literature, but it is Ganeshananthan's warm prose that ambles the reader alongside Sashi and her journey.

Brotherless Night is my favorite kind of novel, one so rich and full of movement that it's only later I realize how much I have learned. Set in the 1980s Sri Lanka, this is the story of Sashikala “Sashi” and her family (mother, father and her 4 brothers). The focus on Sashi and her family gives readers a connection to the many who struggled and suffered. Fleeing to survive, Sashi agrees to work as a medic at a field hospital for one of the fighting military factions.It's told from the perspective of a character who was an ordinary person living in Jaffna, even though she eventually became affiliated with the Tigers it was because of her commitment to healing people, rather than any political ideology. When one of her brothers loses his life in an act of anti-Tamil violence and two of her brothers and a family friend join the “movement” Sashi finds herself making choices and being drawn into a life she had never imagined for herself- a medical student also working as a medic for those serving in the movement.

Sashi dreams of becoming a doctor just like her eldest brother but after the violence of the war begins, her entire world and everything she knows turns upside down. What follows is a history of the first ten years of the Sri Lankan Civil War told through the lens of one Tamil woman caught in the middle.In many of the situations it was not clear which was the morally right choice to make, and I think that was the author's intent, to show us that in a war there are times when there is no clear division between "good" and "evil". The reader watches as Sashi questions the means (brutality and murder) used by the Tamil Tigers, yet understands why her brothers have joined the group. 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.