Brotherless Night

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You must understand: There is no single day on which a war begins. The conflict will collect around you gradually, the way carrion birds assemble around the vulnerable, until there are so many predators that the object of their hunger is not even visible. You will not even be able to see yourself in the gathering crowd of those who would kill you.” Also Read: Growth of children’s literature is critical for a nation: Kavita Gupta Sabharwal And she believes very strongly that people, regardless of their political beliefs, deserve to have health care,” said Ganeshananthan. “But she also finds herself in situations that politically and morally she can't abide.” 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. " VVG: The language of terrorism has been something that I’ve seen batted around about my community since long before 9/11. But I started writing this book after 9/11, when the Sri Lankan government started using post-9/11 language about the War on Terror. After 9/11, that was how the Sri Lankan government presented the civil war to the international community, as a war on terrorism. It was a way for them to get increased support. That language was something that I’d spent a lot of time thinking about and something that I wanted to contest because — and I’m sure this is something someone else said to me first — I have a hard time using the term terrorism if we’re not also going to talk about state terrorism, which is something we see a great deal in this world. We meet the central protagonist, Sashi, at the age of sixteen. She spills boiling water over her body. A friend, passing by on the street, hears her screams. A medical student, he improvises, covering her burns with the whites of eggs. She too studies to become a doctor. To save lives, any person´s life, is what she wants to do. Her brothers are drawn into the Tamil Tigers terrorist movement. Saving life and terrorism are placed side by side. The exigencies of both are laid bare.

VG: Right. I think in the past couple of years there have been some four thousand people who have been killed or just disappeared. One thing that is very common right now in the north is for people to just be kidnapped. It’s even happened a couple of times in the capital. People disappear into white vans, which have become this sign of rogue elements of who knows what, maybe it’s the rebels, maybe it’s the government, and people are kidnapped. Oftentimes it is Tamil civilians who are being kidnapped. And a lot of them have actually been journalists. Retro Active: Bill Clinton can still work a crowd like no other Democrat -- which is both a good and bad thing." The American Prospect. September 16, 2003. SM: What’s your personal stake in the book? It comes through, the passion that you have, the feeling for the characters. How necessary was this book for you to write?Ganeshananthan will launch the book with a conversation with Curtis Sittenfeld at the Magers & Quinn bookstore in Minneapolis on Thursday, Jan. 26. Sashi's family is part of the Tamil minority, and as the bloody violence erupts, each of her brothers is pulled in different ways into the fight. Women in war

VG: Well, I think that because she was the only woman among the four [authors of The Broken Palmyra], naturally I look to her as an example of someone who was intensely principled and also clearly a really powerful storyteller. My own father is a physician, and I also know a lot of Sri Lankan doctors, probably most of whom are Tamil. I spent some time reading about those experiences. Things like the hospital massacre did occur, for example, but there were lots of precarious situations of people treating other people. And she in particular, because she was the professor of anatomy, had this outsized influence on the students. When I think about the ways that doctors communicate care, I think there’s a lot in common with the things that I care about and want to pay attention to. And the doctors that I respect the most are looking at people holistically, which also seemed like something that that she was doing, and specifically caring for women, specifically noting the experiences of women in her community related to sexual violence. In “Brotherless Night,” Sashi, the medicine-obsessed high schooler, becomes Sashi, the medical student. But her commitment to the ancient ideal of “first do no harm” is soon sorely tested. A young man for whom she has unrequited feelings asks her to help in a field hospital set up by the Tamil Tiger rebel group. She has misgivings about the Tigers, but says yes. In the works for well over a decade, Brotherless Nightand the events it describes were partially inspired by a non-fiction book called The Broken Palmyra, first published in 1989. Written by four academics from the University of Jaffna (one of whom has inspired a character in Ganeshananthan’s novel), the book was an insiders’ account of the Tamil crisis in Sri Lanka and also documented the human rights violations carried out by the Sri Lankan government. Also Read: The parallel worlds of Mridula Garg’s women Brotherless Night is an absolute triumph. It is a masterpiece, giving us one woman's perspective of the Sri Lankan Civil War, and simultaneously showing us how in that one perspective lies everything. It is the story of coming of age into a world that becomes increasingly fragmented and horrific, where every lesson comes at a painful cost, and every lovely memory seems to exact an exorbitant price. And yet despite the pain, there is so much beauty in this book, at a fundamental, granular level. Every sentence is stunning, bringing a complicated world and unforgettable characters to life.A courageous young Sri Lankan woman tries to protect her dream of becoming a doctor in this “heartbreaking exploration of a family fractured by civil war” (Brit Bennett, #1 New York Times bestselling author of The Vanishing Half). My father nodded. “Be careful,” he said, his voice low. He held Niranjan’s arm and then released him. Ganeshananthan is a superb writer...I wept at many points in this novel and I also wept when it was over' Sunday Times You wait here for me,” Niranjan said, his face a stone. “There isn’t time to argue. Just listen for once, will you?” Then he turned to Dayalan and my father. 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.