
Brotherless Night
A Novel
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Narrated by:
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Nirmala Rajasingam
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.
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Critic reviews
“Brotherless Night succeeds in telling all its stories—the historical and the personal, the factual and the ethical—as one, and that narrative has echoes. . . . 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.”—The New Yorker
“Riveting, heartbreaking and extraordinary . . . Brotherless Night is a masterpiece.”—Minneapolis Star Tribune
“A blazingly brilliant novel . . . With immense compassion and deep moral complexity, V. V. Ganeshananthan brings us an achingly moving portrait of a world full of turmoil, but one in which human connections and shared stories can teach us how—and as importantly, why—to survive.”—Celeste Ng, New York Times bestselling author of Little Fires Everywhere
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Excellent use of language - very eloquent author
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History no one teaches
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Another amazing book by Vasugi
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Stunning
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Fiction was never so real!
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It’s both a particular story of a narrator and the people and places she holds dear as well as a much larger story about insurrection, civil war, terrorism, point-of-view. “History is written by the victors” said Winston Churchill. This searing novel reads like memoir; the narrator having sustained unimaginable losses (including bothers) lives to right the record.
Likely an unimaginable story to you…
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A story of courage
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Thank you for taking the time to tell this complex story. Hope more non-Tamils would read or listen to this sad tragic story of a nation.
Heartbreaking…
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V.V. Ganeshananthan tells the story from a Tamil or minority perspective detailing how even a righteous rebellion against a government goes wrong when power corrupts the leaders. She shows how, within one family, all the children respond to the rebels differently, some accepting their rhetoric and others opposed to it. This story resonates with the current Palestinian and Israeli conflict— in both scenarios innocent civilians become collateral damage when the fighting begins. War is hell and civil war is perhaps the most hellish.
The Sri Lankan Civil War from a Tamil Perspective
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Heartbreaking
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