Set during Sri Lanka’s civil war, V.V. Ganeshananthan’s BROTHERLESS NIGHT follows a young woman, Sashi, as she seeks to protect both her dreams of becoming a doctor and the lives of her loved ones in the wake of escalating violence and discrimination. As war rages around them, Sashi struggles to survive amidst death, fear, and endless brotherless nights, as she begins to lose the boys she loves the most. These boys—dead, or gone to join the Tamil Tigers and other militant groups fighting for a Tamil homeland, their changing values turning their leaving into another kind of loss, and a moral crisis for Sashi as she determines how she wants to resist, fight, and show her power. At the same time, she is clear that her condemnation of violence is a complicated thing, as all things are in impossible situations. “You must understand: that word, terrorist, is too simple for the history we have lived…” she says. “Whose stories will you believe? For how long will you listen?”

BROTHERLESS NIGHT is an invitation to question the narratives we are told, to restructure the course of history we have mapped out in our minds. It is a powerful tribute to the resistance and bravery of women. Most of all, it is an account of terrible things that happened to many people. As Sashi grieves, she says: “I wanted the four clean walls of my Jaffna childhood, the courtyard with its cup of sunlight, the small and dear lane where I had grown up. Give me a house that hasn’t burned, I thought: an upright home full of people who consider me precious.” I ached for her throughout this book, for the lost lives and futures and would-have-beens, for the ways that hate can make others forget that life should be treated as precious.

Sashi’s resilence and courage are miraculous; and yet I wished for another impossible miracle: to rewind the course of history, to un-burn libraries and markets and homes, to un-do death and starvation, to put the light back in young eyes, to erase blood from hands that were never meant to kill. Listening is a powerful thing, in that it is also a reminder that we cannot change the past, but amplify its stories and work to a changed future.

[Thanks to the publisher for a review copy. This is out now]

BROTHERLESS NIGHT is a truly stand-out book that I’ve read recently, and one that really I hope gets more attention. It’s a beautifully and compellingly told novel about a young woman who finds her dreams of becoming a physician interrupted by the escalating Sri Lankan Civil War, which quickly overtakes both her own life and the lives of her four brothers.

I was blown away by this novel; the writing is at the same time powerful and straightforward, which I felt made it hard for me to put this book down. Sashi, the main character, is a strikingly complex individual who is presented with fraught choices at every turn. I loved the way Ganeshananthan depicted Sashi’s personal convictions and inner turmoil as the people she loved most in her life often asked her to take on some truly difficult tasks, putting her own career and wellbeing in jeopardy. Throughout the novel, we consider the lengths one will go to protect their loved ones—the sacrifices one is willing to make for love.

I think this book has a bit of something for everyone: it has excellent character development for fans of more character-driven books, as well as a gripping storyline that will have you returning to the pages. It’s an intense and powerful read.

This is one of the best pieces of fiction I have read in a while, and absolutely a 2023 favorite. This is definitely one you’ll want (need) to add to your reading list.

All my reviews live at https://deedispeaking.com/reads/.

TL;DR REVIEW:

Brotherless Night is a beautiful and heartbreaking and powerful novel about one girl’s coming-of-age during the Sri Lankan civil war. I absolutely loved it.

For you if: You like books with especially strong first-person narrators.

FULL REVIEW:

Random House sent me an early review copy of Brotherless Night (although it’s out now!), and its incredible blurbs (Celest Ng, Brit Bennett) convinced me to bump it to the top of my list. And holy moly, am I glad I did. This one could easily make my list of favorites for 2023.

The prologue starts with an arresting opening line: “I recently sent a letter to a terrorist I used to know.” And that paragraph ends just as powerfully: “I met a lot of these sorts of people when I was younger because I used to be what you would call a terrorist myself.” So begins our time with Sashi, who is older and living in the US now, but telling us her story as it started in 1981 in Jaffna, when she was a teenager and the Sri Lankan civil war was just beginning. She dreams of becoming a doctor, to help people as her grandfather did. And she does — but along the way, anti-Tamil violence costs her family dearly, in more ways than just lives: two of her brothers join the Tamil Tigers, as does a close family friend. Eventually, Sashi herself finds herself drawn into the conflict herself, in ways that I don’t want to spoil but found deeply resonant.

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. But it wasn’t just excellent on a sentence level. This book is tough to read at times, but gorgeous and heartbreaking and powerful throughout. There are no good guys in war, and it’s easy to condemn actions from the outside, but who knows what each of us would do to keep our families safe? Humans are flawed and beautiful and never black and white, and neither are our choices. No matter what, there is strength in those who fight and those who survive.

Get yourself a copy of this one and read it, please.

I couldn't put this down. It was incandescent. It was searing. It made my heart physically ache, and made me do a thousand searches for nonfiction follow-ups. I am 100% going to read Ganeshananthan's previous book. the writing for this just completely gripped me, and once I got going in earnest, it just snowballed. 

The family of the novel's protagonist Sashi is complex, and the book spends the entire time slowly unwinding the moral complexity of strongly held beliefs, and unravelling the word 'terrorist'. I was struck by the way Ganeshananthan made the entire cast of characters possible to understand, and you could see consistency of character even as motivation and ideologies changed. Truly can't wait to insist that everyone read this in 2023 and beyond. 

*Thanks to Random House, NetGalley for the ARC. Book release: 3 Jan 2023*