Brotherless Night
SynopsisPlot
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.
Story
About this book
In 1981, sixteen-year-old Sashi lives in Jaffna, a city in northern Sri Lanka, and wants to study medicine. Over the following decade, civil war reshapes her plans and her family. Her four brothers and their friend K are drawn into the escalating conflict between the Sri Lankan state and Tamil militant groups, including the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam, who are fighting for a separate Tamil homeland after years of state discrimination.
Sashi begins working as a medic at a field hospital run by the Tigers, prompted by K's invitation and her own desire to do something useful. But her position grows more complicated as the Tigers carry out killings that reach into her own circle, and Indian peacekeeping forces, sent to stabilize the region, commit abuses of their own. Caught between armed factions, Sashi starts to reconsider her allegiances.
A medical school professor, a Tamil feminist and dissident, offers Sashi a different kind of action: joining a covert effort to document human rights violations. The novel follows Sashi across these years as she moves between loyalty, conscience, and survival in a place where every choice carries consequences. V. V. Ganeshananthan sets the story during the early phase of a war that would last roughly three decades.
