Review of Brotherless Night by V.V. Ganeshananthan

“Imagine the places you grew up, the places you studied, places that belonged to your people, burned. But I should stop pretending that I know you. Perhaps you do not have to imagine. Perhaps your library, too, went up in smoke”

— V.V. Ganeshananthan

I do not know where I found out about this book originally, but I am pretty confident it was some most anticipated reads of 2023 list. I had not heard of Ganeshananthan before reading this book, but I will say upfront I ended up dev

ouring this book in one sitting. I was on winter break when I checked this out of the library, but the writing and plot was so good that I ended up staying up until two am just to finish it in one go. Hands down, I think this is one of my favorite books I’ve ever read.

Sri Lanka is a country I don’t know much of, as we didn’t learn about it in school. South Asia historically has been a question mark for me up until my sophomore year of college, when I attended the Summer Institute at IWP, and ever since then I’ve been trying to catch up because that program ended up exposing my ignorance about the region. This book is specifically about the Sri Lankan Civil War and one girl’s experiences throughout it.

Onwards with the review!

A Tamil girl and her family is caught up in the throes of war when the Sri Lankan Civil War begins.

Our protagonist in Brotherless Night is Sashikala “Sashi” Kulenthiren. She has four brothers, a mother, and a father and they live in harmony in a town called Jaffna in Sri Lanka. Her eldest brother, Niranjan, is preparing to become a doctor, and Sashi herself dreams of becoming a doctor like her brother and late grandfather.

The family is Tamil, though, and increasing anti-Tamil hate is sweeping across the Sinhalese majority in Sri Lanka.

The year is 1981, and the Sri Lankan Civil War is about to begin. The first signs of violence creeping into Sashi’s life happens when the town’s library burns down, and her brothers and she lament about how they lost a place where they were able to be educated and study.

However, when Sashi and Niranjan come to her grandmother’s place to say, everything is about to change for the worst. The town is swept up in anti-Tamil violence one night, and Niranjan, the driver, and his friend go off into the night promising to return. They never come back.

When the mobs start coming from house to house, and Sashi and her grandmother witness the neighbor being beaten and left behind in a burning house, they flee with what little they can bring. Everything is going to be burned to the ground if they stay. They return to Sashi’s parent’s home in Jaffna, where, not long later, they learn that Niranjan and his group were beaten and burned alive in their car. Her eldest brother is dead.

The violence increases—Brotherless Night is not an easy book to read because of this. Sashi continues trying to study to become a doctor, but things are getting worse for the Tamil population, especially in her town of Jaffna.

Her other two elder brothers end up enlisting in the Tamil Tigers to fight against the Sri Lankan government, as the Tamil Tigers at the time were fighting for an independent Tamil nation of their own. Her friend, K, also enlists and becomes high-ranking in the Tigers. As the novel shows, the Tigers themselves were not innocent. Anyone they suspected they would brutally beat down, leaving a trail of violence in their path.

Sashi does not agree with this originally, and eventually becomes accepted into medical school. But as the war and violence drags on, she ends up getting sucked into the Tigers’ ranks through her brothers and connection with K. She serves them as a medic, keeping this a secret from her mother and other brother, who sees the Tigers as something to be feared and to avoid. Sashi finds a mentor in one of the teachers at her medical school, one who openly opposes the Tigers and what they’re trying to do.

Eventually, as the conflict worsens, Sashi and her younger brother are sent abroad. He leaves for England, but she refuses to leave and finds her way back to her mentor, who is compiling documents to expose the extent of what’s going on with her husband. That ends up costing the mentor her life; she is shot point blank after being arrested due to this.

One of Sashi’s brothers dies in the act of war, and K, in an attempt to negotiate with the Sri Lankan government, goes on a hunger strike. After several days, he dies.

Sashi, who avoids politics, only ends up joining her mentor and the mentor’s husband in their quest to expose the brutality happening due to the fact she volunteers at the civilian hospital. A woman who came in pregnant becomes a suicide bomber, killing others, herself, and the child. Sashi is so distraught by this she is moved into becoming a force for good politically, no longer able to sit and passively watch everything going on or treat the wounded.

At the beginning of the book, it is revealed Sashi lives in New York City and is a doctor. She completed her education and set out what she needs to do, and her other surviving brother, who used to be in the Tamil Tigers, lives in Queens.

Brotherless Night ends in 2009, with the United Nations trying to take action over the horrors and atrocities taking place in Sri Lanka over the course of thirty years. The conflict is about to end, but as the novel shows, so many things failed during this process. India failed to help Sri Lanka in its fullest capabilities, the world failed Sri Lanka. And, worst of all, Sri Lankans failed each other.

Overall Thoughts

Brotherless Night is a book that may be considered a masterpiece in the future. It reads like a memoir but is an actual piece of fiction; only the events described unique to the civil war are what actually happened. The library burning in Jaffna was a real event, too.

But the narrator’s voice is so strong, the characters fleshed out in a way that it is heartbreaking to see what happens to them.

This is a novel that is seeped in tragedy, exposing what it also is like to be a woman navigating the world during bombings, rapes, civilian attacks from the Sinhalese majority and the Tamils themselves.

Our protagonist loses so much, but she does not lose focus of what it means to achieve the goals she set out to do. Brotherless Night can easily be read by those who don’t have knowledge of the Sri Lankan Civil War; the events that happened are seamlessly introduced into the narrative through methods that feel accessible.

Read this one if you haven’t already.

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