I'd give this six stars if I could.

"Brotherless Night" is a masterpiece. It is hard to know what else to say after reading this and letting it sit with me for several days, reflecting deeply on its searing message about war and its aftermath, especially as it relates to family and identity.

There are some fictional characters, where even the term "fictional character" doesn't do enough justice. It is a beautiful designation, but sometimes we need more, and that is the case. Sashi is a living, breathing soul who inhabited the heart of this work. Her voice was so lucid I could hear it, crisp in my ears as I turned each page. Because it was so powerful, this was not a novel I could devour, and I spent a couple of months reading it. Every time I returned to it, I welcomed Sashi's genuine voice but was so profoundly moved by what she and her people had to endure.

This is a novel about dilemma because we could see Sashi wrestle so clearly with choices at pivotal moments, at seeing the crossroads and wonder the direction her decisions would take her. These especially rang true vocationally, as Sashi wonders how to best navigate her own path as a healer in the face of such chaos and atrocity around her.

And this is probably what I found was one of the most profound statements of the novel. The first third of the book or so illuminates some of Sashi's teenage years, especially as she prepares to study for exams related to medical school. This should be a joyous rite of passage - an arduous one, academically, sure. But all of this is complicated with the political upheaval and the loss and destruction around her. What should be a bedrock certainty and a human right - the right to an education and the freedom to pursue what subjects we desire - is lost, or at the very least muddled, in the face of such turmoil.

All in all, this heartbreaking, indelible, necessary book will stay with me for a very long time. It was a sacred honor to read it, to experience Sashi's journeys and the palette of emotions that came from within it. I am thankful that I got to know her, to see an individual that, in the face of such unspeakable devastation, was able to maintain her humanity and do what she could to ease other's pain in an atmosphere fraught with such complexity. An absolute tour de force from V. V. Ganeshananthan.

This well written, disturbing novel tells the story of a Tamil family from the beginning of the Sri Lankan Civil War into the 21st century. Narrated by a young woman from a well-educated Tamil family, Sashi studies medicine and volunteers at a Tamil field hospital. It’s a difficult novel to read and has won several international fiction awards.

This was a difficult book to read because of the subject matter. It is an important story and very well written.

Brotherless Night by V. V. Ganeshananthan is the story of Black July and its aftermath in Sri Lanka. It is the story of how extremism grows and takes root on all sides of a political dialogue. It is the story of how the divides becomes larger and larger. Reading it at this moment in history magnifies the impact as these tragic words continue to resonate in conflicts around the world. Despite the repeated pleas for understanding, we do not understand.

Read my complete review at http://www.memoriesfrombooks.com/2024/06/brotherless-night.html

Reviewed for NetGalley.

#brotherlessnight by @v_v_ganeshananthan is on the #shortlist for the 2024 @womensprize for fiction and #wow now I know why. This book I tabbed for every poignant or important moment and I ran out of the color tab and had to move on to the next color. There are so many beautiful passages and so many horrific things to try to understand. But you won’t. You won’t understand how a rebel group that wants rights for its people will also kill their own people when they don’t agree, or form separate groups. You won’t understand how one young person could lose so much and still go on. This book devastated me because the main character Sashi is about the same age I was when all this was happening back in the 1980s. When I thought of #srilanka I thought of the paradise of beautiful beaches I saw in #duranduran music videos, not of a civil war. I was going to proms and singing in a choir and living my sheltered privileged life in a country with no civil war, where the only violence I encountered was an occasional schoolgirl fight. Meanwhile, girls like Sashi were ducking bombs, hiding from rebels and soldiers, treating wounded people as would a doctor, some just little children….were losing family members to violence. I would just like to say that I’ve sat on this book for a few days feeling all kinds of emotions. Shame being one of them. Thankfulness that I didn’t live through something like that then guilt for feeling grateful. This book is complex - and heartbreaking - inconceivable to those of us who were not born into this type of civil strife. I think it’s important for Americans to read these stories which tell of a history and atrocities that were happening so far away from us and of which we had no clue - at least - not as children and teens. I’ll leave you with this quote, “You must understand: there is no single day on which a war begins. The conflict will collect around you gradually, the way carrion birds assemble around the vulnerable, until there are so many predators that the object of their hunger is not even visible. You will not even be able to see yourself in the gathering crowd of those who would kill you.”

Beautiful and impactful writing. Read this!

Thank you very much @netgalley for the Advanced Reader Copy of Brotherless Night. I got about 27% into this, and did not finish. There is brutality in Sri Lanka in the war in 1981. We follow members of a family and see how they all respond to the awful situation. There is a lot of violence, and I just found it hard to read. #brotherless night. #netgalley #bookstagram #lovetoread #advancedreadercopy

Brotherless Night is a beautifully written novel. Ganeshananthan's prose is unflinching, capturing the beauty of Sri Lanka even as she confronts the ugliness of war. The story is a gripping testament to the human cost of conflict and the enduring power of love and hope. This is a book for lovers of historical fiction.

Many thanks to the author, publisher, and NetGalley for sharing this book with me.

A true masterpiece spanning time and with a unique narrative voice. I still think about it months later especially with the war in Gaza… the moral choices people have to make in the face of oppression and sectarian violence.

4.5 stars. Thank you Net Galley and Random House for the ARC in exchange for my honest review. We follow Sashi who is part of a family of four brothers. She has dreams of being a doctor, as her oldest brother is training to be. It's 1981 and she lives in Jaffna in Sri Lanka. We follow her, her brothers and their friend K (her secret crush) as they all encounter Black July in Colombo - a pogrom of the Tamil people by the Sinhalese. Thousands of Tamils were murdered, raped and attacked; homes and businesses were destroyed; and hundreds of thousands became refugees as they fled with nothing. The brothers except one and K become part of the Tamil Tigers, the rebellion against the Sinhalese who control the military, police and government. Although she doesn't agree with the rebellion as they commit many atrocities as well, Sashi makes the decision to provide medical care for the rebels but questions helping the rebellion. She then becomes involved with a feminist project that documents human rights violations which changes her life forever. I had never heard of this horrible and tragic event and the way it's framed through Sashi's eyes makes it compelling and a page turner.

It's 1981 in Jaffna, Sri Lanka. Sixteen-year-old Sashi wants to become a doctor. But over the next decade, a vicious civil war tears through her town and divides her from her four beloved brothers and their friend K. She must decide how to act. Will she continue to use her medical knowledge to help the militant Tamil Tigers or will she join her beloved professor, a Tamil feminist and dissident, to secretly document human rights violations?
This book took me a while to get into. But by the middle, I was hooked and am glad I persevered. The entire story broke my heart and also inspired me. I laughed, cried, and felt anger and satisfaction. The following blurb was true for me: "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."
And like Sashi, I realized I may be unable to change the world. But I can make a difference in my home and circle of influence.
One thing I didn't like is that unlike the book's narrator, the author wasn't personally involved in the war. I wanted it to be more autobiographical. I did like that one of my favorite characters is based on real-life Rajani Thiranagama.
Favorite quotes or ideas:
Sashi's family: "Appa, heavy-browed and stern; Niranjan with his steady, quietly content gaze; Seelan smiling a slightly angry smile; Aran clutching a newspaper; Amma happy and worried; Dayalan himself at one edge, with a too-serious expression. He had put me in the center, a stethoscope around my neck."
"You have to see the world yourself— don’t let others tell you what it looks like.”
"There is no real way to know what you will be able to do until the moment you are required to do it."
“'Do you want to tell me what happened?' I didn’t, and yet I had already begun. 'It won’t unhappen just because you don’t say it, Sashikala,' she said sympathetically."
“I find that when I write things down, I can think about them more clearly.”
"This idea of gradual improvement was how I had heard my parents, who considered themselves progressive, speak about caste when Aran brought it up: yes, it’s very unfortunate— as though such a system had simply happened naturally. Things have to develop, it takes time, you can’t expect change overnight, they have to educate themselves, we are sympathetic, but—! This was, I suddenly understood, a very patient, middle-class way to talk about change....If you only work to improve things within the existing framework, then you can’t question the existing framework. 'That’s why the movement is so important. It questions the existing framework.'”

I just finished reading the second novel written by the brilliant, acclaimed author V. V. Ganeshananthan titled Brotherless Night published in January 2023. Though almost 350 pages long I finished the book quickly, anxious to know the fates of its characters and learn details of the decades-long civil war fictionalized in the book of which I previously was not aware. The war began in July 1983 and ended in May 2009 between the Sinhalese-dominated Sri Lankan government and several insurgent groups wanting to establish a separate state for Sri Lanka’s Tamil minority; the brutal Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam eventually eliminated all other insurgent groups, and the war ended when its leader ultimately was killed. Nevertheless, as noted in the Author’s Notes and Acknowledgements, conflicts continue to arise between the two ethnic groups.

Ms. Ganeshananthan’s novel renders in expert, graphic detail the hardships and losses inflicted and incurred by both warring factions, the government and the rebels. It is told through the lens of female protagonist, Sashi, beginning as a teenager and concluding decades later as an adult. Her family and friends are torn apart by their ideals, and some die in the brutality of the fighting: one brother is killed by the government at the start of the war, known as “Black July,” two brothers and a close friend choose to fight with the rebels, one brother killed in the fighting and the friend choosing to die for the cause, and two beloved Tamil teachers are killed by the rebels themselves. Innumerable Tamil properties, villages and people are destroyed not only by the majority Sinhalese military but also by Tamil rebels purporting to fight on the minority’s behalf. Of course many Sinhalese also are killed by the insurgents as are Indian military personnel sent in as a “peacekeeping” force but which in reality tortured and raped Tamil women.

The characters in Brotherless Night are so vividly drawn that I couldn’t help but empathize with many of them and be repulsed by others, and the prose is so engrossing that I was sorry to finish reading. It is one of the best historical fiction books I’ve read in many years; thus I look forward to reading Ms. Ganeshananthan’s first novel Love Marriage (longlisted for the Women's Prize [one of the United Kingdom’s most prestigious literary prizes] and named one of the best books of the year by The Washington Post) and would love to read any future endeavors.

Thank you to Ms. Ganeshananthan, NetGalley, and Random House Publishing for providing me a free, advanced, digital reader’s copy of Brotherless Night. My review is written voluntarily.

A sprawling novel set in 1980's Sri Lanka about family, war, and politics and their intersection in a time of civil unrest. The cast of supporting characters is too large, and, in many cases, not fleshed out enough for the reader to care about. However, the story is compelling and features a strong narrator in the form of medical student (and sometimes revolutionary) Sashikala Kulenthiren, and Ganeshanathan's prose is lucid and beautiful. The book is also a meta-commentary on reading, writing, and history: who is called upon to offer explanation for their actions and who is not? Who is permitted to submit their life story as capital-H History, and whose experience will remain apocryphal? How can writing affect change when the subject is an experience is beyond words? Can we read and think our way out of violence? A book that provides more questions than answers about blood ties, conflict, and loyalty that fans of Arundhati Roy and Yaa Gyasi will want to check out.

Thanks for the review copy. I enjoyed reading about this young, courageous woman while she protected her dream of becoming a doctor, I’m sure people will love it.

I am DNFing this for the time being, hoping to come back later. I know its' going to be so worth reading, but the beginning is really slow for me, and I'm having trouble getting through it. All the other gorgeous reviews and quotes will inspire me someday, I'm sure.

If Brotherless Night is a difficult read thanks to its size and, more importantly, its subject matter, it's saved by author V.V. Ganeshananthan's humane and uncompromising vision. It's more concerned with the human side of violent headlines, which feels refreshing.

I knew almost nothing about the civil war in Sri Lanka in the second half of the 20th century. The author paints a highly personal and moving story of her family and friends during this tumultuous time. As in any civil war, even the closest of families are tragically torn apart. She, the only girl among 4 brothers, essentially loses all of her brothers due to the ravages of the war, though each brother is lost for a different reason.
She manages to survive on her own, eventually becoming a doctor. She is, in her own way, a hero for both sides. Maybe that is the role most women take on during war.
Sometimes fascinating, sometimes exhausting, but always compelling.

Brotherless Night by V.V. Ganeshananthan is a beautifully written, compelling novel that explores ideas of loyalty to family, culture, and country. It tells the story of Sashi, a 16-year old at the start of the novel who dreams of becoming a doctor.
But civil war tears her life apart. Sashi‘s neighbor and childhood friend, K, and her brothers become members of the Tamil Tigers, the militant opposition to the oppressive Sri Lankan government in Jaffna in the 1980s. I remember hearing about the Tigers on the news when I was in my teens, but this is a part of the world and history that I am sorely uninformed about. Sashi is invited to work as a medic in the field hospital of the Tigers, and she is torn between helping and the terror that both sides, and eventually the Indian peacemakers as well, wreck on the local population. Ganeshananthan creates a world that draws you in immediately, and so you feel the pain of loss throughout the novel. And the loyalty that Sashi feels not only to her culture and family, but to the profession she has fought so hard to join, is palpable right from the beginning. Sashi’s time with her grandmother is especially poignant. Her work with the Tamil Tigers sets her on a path that will eventually take her away from her beloved Sri Lanka, and yet she never truly leaves that life behind. I highly recommend 4/5. Thanks to NetGalley for the eARC.

Brotherless Night by V.V. Ganeshananthan wrecked me. The opening lines of the prologue and chapter 1 (including: "I recently sent a letter to a terrorist I used to know," and "I met the first terrorist I knew when he was deciding to become one") were so gripping and set the scene for a book exploring various types of terror through heart-wrenching family saga filled with unrelenting trauma and sadness. It's also a coming-of-age story of Sashi - a teenage Tamil woman in a family with four sons who dreams of becoming a doctor. The story is narrated in the first person and is told in a straightforward way that makes the nuanced and intricate historical details of the Sri Lankan civil war more accessible than most other fiction I've read about this time/place. The moral dilemmas/ethical questions and heartbreaking plotlines make this an engrossing - though emotionally exhausting - read. I recommend for anyone who loves historical fiction, family sagas, and questioning perceptions of morality. Not for the faint of heart or readers who need lightness from their reading life - this book is very heavy.

This book is beautiful but harrowing. I had a hard time finishing only because so many of the events depicted are so difficult to stomach. I didn’t know anything about the Sri Lankan civil war and I learned a lot in this book, but what I loved most was getting to see how the different characters faced the incredible challenges of their time. It’s impossible to know how you yourself would react in a revolution, or to the government imprisoning a loved one; watching these characters weigh their impossible choices was hard but worth it. One of my favorite moments in the book is when mothers and daughters organize to protect sons/brothers. I don’t want to say more than that because of spoilers, but I cried at how they came together and exacted their demands. I would recommend this book to anyone who likes historical fiction or learning about real events through the eyes of relatable characters.

I really didn’t know what to expect going into this, and I was heartbroken by the end. The importance of stories and sharing them is told so beautifully here, and I feel honored to have been able to read them