A Review of V.V. Ganeshananthan’s Brotherless Night (Random House, 2023)

[lsobiesk]

Written by Stephen Hong Sohn

Edited by Lizzy Sobiesk

V.V. Ganeshananthan’s Brotherless Night (Random House, 2023) is an absolute punch to the gut. I couldn’t finish this novel easily. I had to take breaks. At some point, I realized that it might be a good subway reading novel, where I only have 30-minute segments to get immersed. This approach proved to be the best one, as I finished it this way. In any case, the marketing description will provide us with a great introduction: “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. Set during the early years of Sri Lanka’s three-decade civil war, Brotherless Night is a heartrending portrait of one woman’s moral journey and a testament to both the enduring impact of war and the bonds of home.”

 

I wish the description actually named the four brothers that Sashi has; they are Niranjan, Seelan, Dayalan, and Aran. As you might have guessed, the “brotherless” in the title refers to the fact that one of Sashi’s siblings will die. The older, Naranjan, will be killed in anti-Tamil violence. This moment will prove to be instrumental for the eventual disintegration of family bonds. It spurs Seelan and Dayalan into joining the Tamil Tigers; K will also join up at this point. Sashi is forced to navigate this complicated political territory. On the one hand, she does not want her surviving brothers to die, but on the other, she is not interested in becoming part of the movement herself. She does provide some of the Tamil Tigers with her medical expertise, especially once she starts her schooling. Sashi is a character who will not refuse to sit by and watch her neighbors, her friends, family members, and even strangers die. She is a healer and archivist at heart; despite so much danger, Sashi stays true to her principles. The novel does ultimately reveal that Sashi will eventually lose all of her brothers in way or another, whether to the movement or to the fact that she will figuratively or metaphorically betray them. In this respect, the novel’s most profound devastations occur because the family’s ultimate dissolution is one that is being mirrored in many families across Sri Lanka. A late-stage character that serves as a kind of foil to Sashi, one that also has four brothers, is crucial to Sashi’s final arc, as she comes to realize what it is she must do and where it is she must ultimately go. Ganeshananthan’s work is a morally complex representation in a time of great polarization. I could not sleep well after I finished this work, because it speaks so much to our current moment. Adding to the incredible political texture of this work is Ganeshananthan’s always gorgeous prose (check out her previous Love Marriage as evidence), so despite some of the darkest depictions, you’ll sometimes be buoyed by the way Ganeshananthan’s is able to breathe so much vivacity into Sashi, a character we will hold fast to in these turbulent times.

 

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