VG: Yeah, I guess I’m imagining on the other end, hopefully, people who are Sri Lankan diaspora. I hope that this has special resonance for them. I hope that they’re not the only readers, but I think that many of them will find levels of meaning in it that other folks won’t. Many thanks to the author, Random House Publishing Group and NetGalley for the digital ARC of this exceptionally well-written novel. All opinions expressed in this review are my own. In this novel, I was transported deep into the experiences of civilians who are inspired to action, either to defend their people or to serve all people. They witness first hand terrorism and suffering, all the horror of war. Friends turn on friends, student against teacher, siblings are divided, families displaced. In Ukraine, as in other wars, the full history will take years to tell and it will be told by women." The Los Angeles Times. December 27, 2022.

Here there is no righteous way to fight a pure fight for justice. Sashi loses her brothers and friends to the Tamil Tigers, the revolutionary group rising up in response to the oppression forced upon them by the Sinhalese majority. As a medical student she is recruited to help but discovers the leaders stooping to tactics no better than the enemies they are fighting. While Kumaran’s loved ones gather around him to say goodbye, Yalini traces her family’s roots–and the conflicts facing them as ethnic Tamils–through a series of marriages. Now, as Kumaran’s death and his daughter’s politically motivated nuptials edge closer, Yalini must decide where she stands. VG: Like anyone who loves research, I can always think of things that I wish had gone in. It’s always an act of careful storytelling restraint to put in the things that the characters need and not just everything you love and care about. I kind of wish that I had started knowing how long it would take, but who ever does anything that way? Not me! It was tremendously satisfying to do that research and to hear a lot of people talk about their experiences. A lot of really powerful novels that are set in Sri Lanka talk about the run-up to the war or focus on specific periods, and this particular period and this particular setting are not that traveled ground. And also, specifically to write about women in that place and that time is very important to me. VVG: This is a fair assessment. But to me, it’s important to note that that is in part. We do also see the characters — and specifically, the women — exercising different kinds of individual agency and collective agency as well, looking for and inventing ways of resisting the militarization of their society. Even as there are spaces in which they’re not sure what they get to choose, spaces where it’s unclear whether they’re choosing things or whether they’re being coerced, we do also see women gather for protests, for example.The book is informative. The characters and their life stories pull the reader in. The prose is alternately informative, eloquent and moving. The focus on Sashi and her family gives readers a connection to the many who struggled and suffered. Compassion is what the reader feels. My eyes teared up, not just once but repeatedly. This talented author delivers here a novel that both teaches and moves readers emotionally. I am impressed.

Sixteen-year-old Sashi wants to become a doctor. But over the next decade, as a vicious civil war tears through her hometown of Jaffna, her dream takes her on a different path as she sees those around her, including her four beloved brothers and their friend, get swept up in violent political ideologies and their consequences. Desperate to act, she must ask herself: is it possible for anyone to move through life without doing harm? In 2021, she learned she has a debilitating motor disability in her hands, which makes it hard for her to write. For a while, she used voice recognition software, but she says that while it's good for composition, it's terrible for revision.At the beginning of Brotherless Night, readers meet the protagonist, Sashi, a young Tamil girl growing up in Jaffna, Sri Lanka, along with her four brothers. Part of a tight-knit family, Sashi hopes to train as a doctor, like her oldest brother, so her days are full of studying interrupted only by a crush on another brother’s cute friend. But when Sri Lanka starts to descend into a civil war, the boundaries of Sashi’s comfortable life, as well as those of her brothers, are completely redrawn. Throughout the ensuing violence, Sashi struggles to learn how to care for others as a physician and bear witness to the atrocities committed by all parties involved in the war. Quote from a revered teacher: "Open your books, read while you can, and remember: there are people in our country who would burn what we love and laugh at the flames. " Of course, I don’t think I can say — as some people have said — that this was a war without witness or that nobody knows the stories. Obviously, that’s not true, because there were people there who witnessed it, and they’re Sri Lankan. And there are people who know these stories, and they’re Sri Lankan, too. And those were the people who told me these stories. Those were the people who wrote down these stories, so they were in books for me to find. A searing and intimate depiction of the Sri Lankan civil war from the point of view of an aspiring doctor . . . Ganeshananthan credibly captures the horrors and pain of the conflict felt by those caught between loyalties. It all makes for a convincing and illuminating war novel Publishers Weekly

The best historical fiction novels don’t just tell a great story—they reveal a side of history that their readers may not be familiar with. V. V. Ganeshananthan’s Brotherless Night does just that. . . .[It] is a powerful work of fiction; one that reminds the reader what it means to live through war, and stand as a witness to history.” —Town & CountryShe could talk about one other reason which may have slowed the novel, but also may have added to its power. 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.” 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. 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.” —Danielle Evans, author of The Office of Historical Corrections And when Sashi meets up with K again after years of separation, Ganeshananthan is able to conjure the young couple’s longing through a single touch: “He reached out and wrapped his fingers around mine, so that we were walking and holding hands, and I wondered if anyone could see us, if I wanted that, if it would matter if someone saw, and then I knew that no one could, because if anyone could, he would never have done it. This stolen, safe hour could not last.”