Brotherless Night
A Novel
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4.6 • 5 Ratings
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- $13.99
Publisher Description
New York Times Book Review Editors’ Choice • A courageous young Sri Lankan woman tries to protect her dream of becoming a doctor in this “heartbreaking exploration of a family fractured by civil war” (Brit Bennett, #1 New York Times bestselling author of The Vanishing Half).
“This book, a careful, vivid exploration of what’s lost within a community when life and thought collapse toward binary conflict, rang softly for me as a novel for our own country in this odd time.”—Nathan Heller, The New Yorker
AN NPR BEST BOOK OF THE YEAR • WINNER OF THE CAROL SHIELDS PRIZE FOR FICTION, THE WOMEN’S PRIZE FOR FICTION, AND THE ASIAN PRIZE FOR FICTION • FINALIST FOR THE MINNESOTA BOOK AWARD
Jaffna, 1981. Sixteen-year-old Sashi wants to become a doctor. But over the next decade, a vicious civil war tears through her home, and her dream spins off course as she sees her four beloved brothers and their friend K swept up in the mounting violence. Desperate to act, Sashi accepts K’s invitation to work as a medic at a field hospital for the militant Tamil Tigers, who, following years of state discrimination and violence, are fighting for a separate homeland for Sri Lanka’s Tamil minority. But after the Tigers murder one of her teachers and Indian peacekeepers arrive only to commit further atrocities, Sashi begins to question where she stands. When one of her medical school professors, a Tamil feminist and dissident, invites her to join a secret project documenting human rights violations, she embarks on a dangerous path that will change her forever.
Set during the early years of Sri Lanka’s three-decade civil war, Brotherless Night is a heartrending portrait of one woman’s moral journey and a testament to both the enduring impact of war and the bonds of home.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Ganeshananthan (Love Marriage) offers a searing and intimate depiction of the Sri Lankan civil war from the point of view of an aspiring doctor. In 1981, 15-year-old Sashi Kulenthiren is studying for her A Levels. Her father, a civil servant, works far from their home in Jaffna, leaving her, her mother, and four brothers on their own. After not earning high enough marks to enroll in medical school, Sashi nevertheless continues her studies. While living with her grandmother and older brother, Niranjan, growing separatist sentiment among the northern Tamils leads to riots, and Niranjan disappears. Later, Sashi wins admittance to medical school and there is recruited by her childhood neighbor and crush, K, to work in the makeshift infirmary for the cadres, and two of her brothers join the Tigers. Sashi also finds a mentor in Anjali, a former Tiger supporter who encourages her to start a feminist reading group. As both the Tigers and the Indian peacekeepers commit atrocities, and Sashi's non-Tiger younger brother is detained by the government, she juggles an increasingly grueling schedule and her family urges her to immigrate to England. Ganeshananthan credibly captures the horrors and pain of the conflict felt by those caught between loyalties. It all makes for a convincing and illuminating war novel.
