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Brotherless Night: 'Blazingly brilliant' CELESTE NG

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I have to wonder why this never came up in my decades of schooling, through social studies, world history, and even my graduate level cultural heritage courses. Her name is Anjali and she’s one of Sashi’s medical school professors AND she’s based on a real Sri Lankan woman and activist. Narrated in the first person by our protagonist, Sashi, the tone is direct, often matter-of-fact yet there is much depth to the words, the characters and their stories. Ganeshananthan (she/her) is the author of the novels Brotherless Night (a New York Times Editors’ Choice) and Love Marriage, which was longlisted for the Women’s Prize and named one of the best books of the year by The… More about V.

The Tamil people become more and more outspoken about wanting their own leaders rather than the ruling Sinhalese majority. Fairly early on in the book, a wave of anti-Tamil riots rips through Colombo, with Sinhalese mobs indiscriminately killing, raping, burning, looting and unleashing horror. One more note, the narrator of this audiobook was perfect for this book - she was very matter-of-fact in her reading without ever sounding wooden or detached. Nearly all the men and boys in Sashi's life join the Tamil Tigers and pain and loss become her only constants. Hundreds of thousands of civilians were caught between the armies while the United Nations and the world watched without sending aid.Thousands of Tamils were murdered, raped and attacked; homes and businesses were destroyed; and hundreds of thousands became refugees as they fled with nothing. As a medical student she is recruited to help but discovers the leaders stooping to tactics no better than the enemies they are fighting. The novel begins before the war when Sashi and her brother and his friend K are preparing to study medicine, meeting up at the library. It is unafraid to look directly at the worst of the violence and erasure we have perpetrated or allowed to happen, but is insistent that we can still choose to be better. To calculate the overall star rating and percentage breakdown by star, we don’t use a simple average.

It's told from the perspective of a character who was an ordinary person living in Jaffna, even though she eventually became affiliated with the Tigers it was because of her commitment to healing people, rather than any political ideology.She is a typical teenager studying for her exams in hopes of getting into medical school when she first witnesses signs of unrest.

But over the next decade, as a vicious civil war subsumes Sri Lanka, her dream takes her on a different path as she watches those around her, including her four beloved brothers and their best friend, get swept up in violent political ideologies and their consequences. The story begins just before the Sri Lankan civil war starts as the discrimination against Tamils is growing culminating in the "Black July" pogroms against the Tamils in the summer of 1983. In this searing novel, a courageous young woman tries to protect her dream of becoming a doctor as civil war devastates Sri Lanka. The relationship between the two, which begins with a searingly memorable encounter and develops into something neither fully platonic nor romantic, anchors many of the ugliest years of Sashi’s life, as war breaks out in her hometown. The answer depends entirely on how far back in events you want to go - A never ending and unrewarding past time.Before I started reading Brotherless Night, I had read enough about the Sri Lankan civil war to know that the story would contain tragedy, as that war tore apart virtually every Tamil family in Sri Lanka. People are horrific to each other, and yet their sacrifice for each other to pursue truth and their right to life is equally matched so that, somehow, balance is achieved. A heartbreaking exploration of a family fractured by civil war, this beautiful, nuanced novel follows a young doctor caught within conflicting ideologies as she tries to save lives. In the beginning years of the conflict, 1981, Sashi is growing up in Janka with her three brothers and parents living what seems to be a healthy and happy life. Granted she does have some agency—and often it was defined or prescribed by others or by the “situation.

Set in the 1980s Sri Lanka, this is the story of Sashikala “Sashi” and her family (mother, father and her 4 brothers). I have read books that touched on the Sri Lanka Civil War between the majority population Sinhalese and the Tamil minority. When the Sinhalese round up village boys and takes her youngest brother, her mother and the woman of the village gather in protest. Ganeshananthan is the author of Brotherless Night and Love Marriage, which was longlisted for the Women's Prize and named one of the best books of the year by The Washington Post.

Imagine the places you grew up, the places you studied, places that belonged to your people, burned. A beautiful, brilliant book—it gives an accounting of the unimaginable losses suffered by a family and by a country, but it is as tender and fierce as it is mournful.

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