Brotherless Night: 'Blazingly brilliant' CELESTE NG

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This is a novel that works the particular alchemy of the best fiction: it feels like life, but more so. We see her daily conflicts and burdens evolving from trying to make sense out of violence and obsessive, unyielding beliefs on both sides. Most of the events in this novel take place during the first decade of Sri Lanka’s nearly three-decade civil war, pitting minority Tamil against majority Sinhalese. We experience the incredible tragedies which occurred to ordinary people as a result of the civil war.

Her name is Anjali and she’s one of Sashi’s medical school professors AND she’s based on a real Sri Lankan woman and activist. I want you to understand,” the narrator of BROTHERLESS NIGHT insists, and by the end of this blazingly brilliant novel, we do: that in a world full of turmoil, human connections and shared stories can teach us how—and as importantly, why—to survive. Sashi's med school studies and the impact of a professor there whom she sees as a role model help her to see life's complexities and to see her human behavior in a larger context. This beautiful, nuanced novel follows a young doctor caught within conflicting ideologies as she tries to save lives.

This is a beautiful, lyrical novel based on a sad and deadly chapter in history in Sir Lanka, South Asia.

Ultimately it is the civilian victims--some of whom take extraordinary and courageous risks to fight back (including the narrator)--who are unambiguously and without any moral complexity the heroes of this account. Those sentences not only are a pleasure to read but they powerfully move the story and convey precisely what the narrator thinks and feels. Ganeshananthan (she/her) is the author of the novels Brotherless Night (a New York Times Editors’ Choice) and Love Marriage, which was longlisted for the Women’s Prize and named one of the best books of the year by The… More about V.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. Set in the 1980s Sri Lanka, this is the story of Sashikala “Sashi” and her family (mother, father and her 4 brothers). In the beginning years of the conflict, 1981, Sashi is growing up in Janka with her three brothers and parents living what seems to be a healthy and happy life. Certainly there are other great pieces of historical fiction that get this, but the majority do not.

By far, one of the most impactful, powerful books that I have ever read on a subject (the Sri Lanka civil war in the 1980s) that has been neglected for far too long. As part of the Tamil minority, her family is expected to support the militant group the Tamil Tigers. Also, Sashi wants to go to medical school and become a doctor and as war rages she has her fair share of hands on experience. V. Ganeshananthan cast us as witnesses alongside Sashi to the scorched earth unfolding in the wake of the fight.She has a loving mother, a kind if absent father, four brothers, a grandmother and a best friend all of whom she adores, and maybe even a boy who will be a great love someday. The book is mostly set in the Tamil city of Jaffna and told in the first person by a woman named Sashikala (Sashi) Kulenthiren who is 15 when it starts and on track to attend medical school--which she eventually does. Despite the wrenching honesty of the novel, the strength of those who survive is powerful and somehow uplifting. We slowly see how the conflict breaks families and creates families , it breaks ideals and creates new purpose. Thank you Random House Publishing and NetGalley for providing an advance reader copy in exchange for an honest review.