Brotherless Night: 'Blazingly brilliant' CELESTE NG

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Her work has appeared in Granta, The New York Times, and The Best American Nonrequired Reading, among other publications. 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. V. Ganeshananthan cast us as witnesses alongside Sashi to the scorched earth unfolding in the wake of the fight.

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. The whole thing centred around the attempts of the Tamil Tigers and their efforts to establish their rights.The Tamil people become more and more outspoken about wanting their own leaders rather than the ruling Sinhalese majority. The author does a very good job of explaining the Sri Lankan civil war, which most people outside the region know little about, and I appreciated her historical rigor. 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. I often do not love historical fiction because it bends real and momentous events to fit some ultimately tiny story. This book was impossible to put down; the prose — or maybe it’s more accurate to say Sashi’s voice — had a momentum that just reached out and gripped me and never let go.

She] forces the reader to discard a binary description of the world in favor of a more complex, human one. I know reading is for fun, I review books on the internet in my spare time for enjoyment (and sometimes for free books), it's something I choose to do, I'm not in school anymore, etc etc. Revealing the depth of depravity man can do to fellow man, but weaving in the hope for a better tomorrow, this is not an easy book to read.

I’d recommend this title to get a glimpse of Sri Lanka and perhaps gain some insight into its current conditions. V. Ganeshananthan presents a morally complex portrait of people fighting back against the harassment, discrimination and killings they have been subjected to but then themselves engaged in extreme acts of violence, including against Tamils who are in different factions, are insufficiently supportive of their movement or even critical of it. A heartbreaking exploration of a family fractured by civil war, this beautiful, nuanced novel follows a young doctor caught within conflicting ideologies as she tries to save lives. She has four brothers who are all caught up and affected by the civil war in different ways, all of which in turn affect her.

The good guys are ruthless, people she loves take incredibly cruel actions, and Sashi finds that even following her conscience has regrettable consequences. Through this moving story, Ganeshananthan traces the human aspects of war—the physical losses and tragedies as well as the conflicts of values that are often the true battlefields.Many thanks to the author, Random House Publishing Group and NetGalley for the digital ARC of this exceptionally well-written novel. Prior to reading this book I had no knowledge of this civil war, which occurred while I was growing up. 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.

The story is told by Sashi, who at 16 lives with her mum, dad, and 4 brothers in a village in Jaffna. 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.Following this the Tamil Tigers grow in power and Jaffna (and other areas) effectively secede from government control.