Book review: Brotherless Night by V V Ganeshananthan

 BROTHERLESS NIGHT by V V Ganeshananthan, Penguin Books.

So, here is another `bearing witness` story from Sri Lanka, a wrenching tale that will stay with the reader a long,  long time after they have turned the last page. The tale, narrated by young Sashikala Kulenthiran takes us year on year through the terrible conflict that wracked the beautiful isle for 26 long and terrible years; it`s a slow, painful tracking and the burning of the Jaffna library is written about in the most wrenching manner.

Sashi watches the militants, young men with dark intense `Jaffna eyes,`  gather in her village and thereabouts, watches the military set up stations across Jaffna to counter this nascent threat, and experiences the privations, dehumanisation  the common people of the area invariably experience, trapped in the pincers of these equally cruel, equally oppressive forces. Along comes the Indian Peacekeeping Force next, only to makes things worse.

She loses two brothers to the LTTE, loses a beloved older brother to rioting in Colombo, and is thus condemned to live through many a brotherless night, her family `torn down the middle like an old newspaper.’ She also lives with the pain of watching a man she carries a torch for rise up the Tiger ranks, moving steadily away from her and all pretense of a normal life. In the end, she is far away in NYC watching the stand-off between the Sri Lankan army and the Tigers, where once again, more than 70,000 civilians (the figures are disputed, of course) lost their lives.

The story has the reader so much in thrall that after every incident, they will find the need to put the book aside and go do something else, to recover.  But read this book they must. Because the reader too bears witness.

Related Links:

Book review: The Seven Moons of Maali Almeida by Shehan Karunatilaka

Book review: Noon Tide Toll by Romesh Gunasekera

Book review: Upon a Sleepless Isle by Andrew Fidel Fernando

Book review: This Divided Island by Samanth Subramanian

Book review: The Seasons of Trouble by Rohini Mohan

Book review: The Story of a Brief Marriage by Anuk Arudpragasam