"Most children have two whole legs and two whole arms but this little six-year-old that Dinesh was carrying had already lost one leg, the right one from the lower thigh down, and was now about to lose his right arm." So begins this short, powerful, depressing, moving book. Dinesh is living in camp under heavy shelling from the Sri Lankan government. He seems like a child but based on further context it appears that he is around 18. His family have all been killed and he is living a liminal existence, helping out with the triage, avoiding shells, and not thinking much about anything. A man asks him to marry his daughter, Ganga, which he does without anything beyond a very simple ceremony as a few people look on (with no priest or certificate). Dinesh and Ganga have only limited interactions in a clearing in the jungle that is somewhat more safe from shelling but then the inevitable "brief" part of the title comes to be. Along the way there are tender portraits not just of human suffering but also of animals that Dinesh identifies with, a crow and a gecko. All together one of the more painful descriptions of war and the physical and psychological toll it takes I have read--with nothing resembling glamor or even much respite.