📍 Jaffna, Sri Lanka 🇱🇰
Sashi is an earnest, young girl full of hope and aspirations, dreaming of becoming a doctor and serving her people in Jaffna. Her family consists of her parents and four brothers. The eldest, Niranjan is already a doctor and dotes on her, constantly encouraging her to study so that she can crack her exams. Seelan and Dayalan, have natural political inclinations and often engage in charged rhetoric. Aran is subdued and wanting a simple and peaceful life. However, it’s 1981 and life in Jaffna is never peaceful. The Tamils are facing crackdown and oppression from the government resulting in a growing dissent and uprising. Niranjan disappears during one such riots in Colombo; their grandmother’s house gets torched to ashes by violent zealots while Sashi and Ammammah escape and endure a perilous and arduous journey back to Jaffna. These events prompt Seelan and Dayalan to join the militant group, Tamil Tigers, who now have taken control of whole of Jaffna. As the government and Tamil Tigers engage in skirmishes, Sashi gets admission to a medical school. There, persuaded by her friend K, joins the Tigers’ field hospital and starts treating their cadres as well as civilians. At her college she comes across her professor who soon becomes her mentor and confidante, Anjali. However, with the political situation becoming increasingly volatile and dangerous, she loses Seelan and Dayalan to the movement; Anjali gets abducted and Aran decides to emigrate. Sashi is gripped by her righteous rage and beliefs, and faces the predicament of whether she should stay back or join Aran and how her future now depends on this very important decision.
The book is a breathless, often claustrophobic account of Sashi’s difficult choices, her internal struggles as she oscillates between interests and intentions, her emotional turmoils as she navigates loss and grief, and her mental prowess dealing with hope and hopelessness. Sashi as a character is an unassuming force to reckon with. The narrative also takes us on a journey of Sri Lanka’s political quagmire, the helplessness of Tamil civilians as they are caught between the militant groups, the government and the Indian Peace Keeping Force. Massacre ensues as places and people get bombed, and depression looms large at every turn.
Brotherless Night, winner of the Women’s Prize for Fiction 2024, is a historical fiction written so brilliantly, that it is unsettling and uncomfortable. The gifted author, V. V. Ganeshananthan, builds the restlessness of the characters, as they encounter death and dilemmas and keeps the book unrelentingly atmospheric. The writing is compelling and persuasive, peppered with Tamil words. Tamil culture, cuisine and traditions get the requisite mention throughout the book. There are moments of such literary brilliance in the book; the scene where Sashi’s docile mother emerges as the proverbial phoenix and leads an uprising against the government along with a group of fierce, inspiring women; the dialogues between Anjali and Sashi as they contemplate the movement, the militants and their pursuit and purpose; as also the extremely unnerving and shocking medical examination scene of a rape victim, brutalised by the Indian Peace Keeping Force.
Brotherless Night will disturb you and it should. It is a complex catastrophic story of survival amidst doom and despair. The ingenuity of the author is such that despite the barbarism and violence on display, humanity finds its place; in the thoughts, conversations and actions of its various characters. This is literature at its finest; V. V. Ganeshananthan, its proud torchbearer.
~ JUST A GAY BOY. 🥹
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