Brotherless Night: 'Blazingly brilliant' CELESTE NG

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She then becomes involved with a feminist project that documents human rights violations which changes her life forever. Her family, as a group and as individuals, is illustrated not only through events and character descriptions, but through the myriad things that make up the fabric of daily life -- conversations about politics and history, foods, clothing, trips to the market and temple. We slowly see how the conflict breaks families and creates families , it breaks ideals and creates new purpose. But there is no shortage or portrayal of the brutality of the Sri Lankan regime or the Indian "peace keepers".

Riveting, heartbreaking and extraordinary for both its empathetic gaze and its clear-eyed depiction of the brutality of war, Brotherless Night is a masterpiece.

This beautiful, nuanced novel follows a young doctor caught within conflicting ideologies as she tries to save lives. The book is mostly set in the Tamil city of Jaffna and told in the first person by a woman named Sashikala (Sashi) Kulenthiren who is 15 when it starts and on track to attend medical school--which she eventually does. The brothers except one and K become part of the Tamil Tigers, the rebellion against the Sinhalese who control the military, police and government. This book, a careful, vivid exploration of what’s lost within a community when life and thought collapse toward binary conflict, rang softly for me as a novel for our own country in this odd time.

By far, one of the most impactful, powerful books that I have ever read on a subject (the Sri Lanka civil war in the 1980s) that has been neglected for far too long. Sashi needs to navigate a world where at first right and wrong become unclear, and later where right and wrong cease to matter. The answer depends entirely on how far back in events you want to go - A never ending and unrewarding past time.a more powerful and different ethnic/religious group, who too powerfully exercised governmental control and responds to violence with more violence.