Brotherless Night (2023)

Why this one?

Having read a selection from the 2024 Women’s Prize Longlist, I”m now making my way through the final couple of books on the 2024 Shortlist, of which this is one.

V. V. "Sugi" Ganeshananthan (1980- ; active 2008- ) was born in the US and of Ilankai (Sri Lankan) Tamil descent. She studied at Harvard, where she served as editor of The Harvard Crimson, and subsequently completed an MFA at the University of Iowa and another master's from Columbia University Grad School of Journalism.

She began her debut novel while at Harvard, and it was published in 2008 as Love Marriage, which was longlisted for the Women's (then Orange) Prize for Fiction as well as being names as a best book of the year by the Washington Post. She has worked as a journalist and college professor, and co-hosts the podcast Fiction/Non/Fiction. Brotherless Night, her second novel, has already taken home the Carol Shield Prize for Fiction.

Thoughts, etc.

Brotherless Night begins in Jaffna, in the Tamil-dominated north of Sri Lanka, in the early 1980s.  Sixteen-year-old Sashi is studying hard, dreaming of going to medical school with her brothers and friend K.  Her life is slowly torn apart with the onset of the Sri Lankan Civil War. While staying with her Grandmother in Colombo in 1983, she finds herself caught up anti-Tamil riots. Her eldest brother is killed and her grandmother’s house burnt down. Subsequently two of her brothers join the Tamil Tigers, and her fourth brother briefly detained by authorities before departing for England.

The book takes us through the entire duration of the war, mostly from the heart of its action and seen through the eyes of Sashi and her family. She becomes increasingly caught up in the events, drawn in by K (with whom she maintains a certain fascination) who ascends to position of prominence within the Tigers’ hierarchy. Initially she works at a field hospital which treats injured Tigers but also others caught up in the fighting, so is able to pass it off both as a generalised act of benevolence and training that will support her studies (which she has resumed in Jaffna under an activist professor based on the real-life Rajani Thiranagama). She seems unable to take herself away from getting further immersed in the movement though, ending up supporting K in a very well publicised hunger strike and ultimately treating a woman (pregnant by rape) who becomes a suicide bomber.

The book is even-handed in its treatment of all the participants of the war, none of whom (the Sinhalese majority rulers, the Tigers or even the Indian Peacekeeping forces) come off in any kind of positive light. By the end of the book Sashi is most closely aligned with her activist university professor - formerly affiliated with the Tigers and an outspoken critic of the Colombo government and latterly behind an anonymous pamphlet-writing campaign that highlights the growing atrocities perpetrated by the Tigers themselves. Folllowing her professor’s murder, Sashi relocates herself to New York, attempting in vain to have a positive impact from a distance.

It’s a book that takes on a complex period of conflict with myriad roots and an anything but black and white narrative, and renders it at least somewhat comprehensible through meticulous research and lucid writing.. It’s illuminating as a result, feeling like a real historical document of this time, albeit one seen through the eyes of one young woman who is trying to do good while living her life, in circumstances that make those relatively basic desires incredibly difficult to fulfill. It’s a worth book with a lot to say about the complexities of history, the role of women in wartime, and the relative merits of the pen versus the sword. Its highlights are the moments in which we’re placed in the middle of historic or representative events (the riots, the Mother’s protest, the hunger strike, the terrorist attack, etc) which are depicted with vivid immediacy.

Score

8

Overall a worthwhile and educational read, which thoroughly deserves its place on the list. It was slightly less satisfying to me in its structure, which was a little linear and as a result felt like it missed chances to dive back into the conflict’s roots and/or its ongoing impact on the region in the present day. However, on its own terms: a telling of the key years of the conflict through the lens of a family being torn apart, it very much succeeds.

Next up

Back to a few reads on my Netgalley queue before the Prize is announced…