Brotherless Night

Location & Checkout Length	Call Number	Checkout Length	Item Status
Downtown 2nd Floor 4-week checkout	Fiction / Ganeshananthan, V. V.	4-week checkout	Due 05-20-2024
Westgate Adult Books 4-week checkout	Adult Book / Fiction / Historical / Ganeshananthan, V. V.	4-week checkout	Due 05-02-2024

"Jaffna, 1981. Sixteen-year-old Sashi wants to become a doctor. But over the next decade, as a vicious civil war subsumes Sri Lanka, her dream takes a different path as she watches those around her, including her four beloved brothers, swept up in violent political ideologies and their consequences. She must ask herself: is it possible for anyone to move through life without doing harm? Sashi begins working 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 the arrival of Indian peacekeepers brings further atrocities, she turns to one of her professors, a feminist and dissident who invites her to join in a dangerous, secret project of documenting human rights violations as a mode of civil resistance to war. In gorgeous, fearless writing, Ganeshananthan captures furious mothers marching to demand news of their disappeared sons; a young student attending the hunger strike of an equally young militant; and a feminist reading group that tries to side with community and justice over any single political belief. Set during the early years of Sri Lanka's thirty-year civil war, and based on over a decade of research, Movement explores the blurred lines between formal participation in conflict and civilian life. This 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"-- Provided by publisher.

REVIEWS & SUMMARIES

Library Journal Review
Booklist Review
Publishers Weekly Review
Summary / Annotation
Excerpt
Author Notes

COMMUNITY REVIEWS

Brilliant exploration of grey morality submitted by redwood on June 22, 2023, 12:56pm This novel, which chronicles the first decade of Sri Lanka’s civil war, made me pause and impressed me more as it went on. It is brilliant, and I will be thinking about it for a long, long time. In deliberate prose that seems to demand slow reading, Ganeshananthan follows Sashi, a young Tamil aspiring physician, from 1981 to 1989, through her teens and her twenties; through Black July, the rise of the Tamil Tigers, the introduction of the Indian Peacekeeping Force. The violence intimately affects Sashi’s family: one brother is killed, and two, along with their childhood friend K (a pivotal character), join the Tigers, whose resistance against the Sri Lankan government also includes violence towards fellow Tamils. Amidst all this, Sashi attends medical school and wonders where she stands. One of her professors, Anjali (based on Rajani Thiranagama), becomes an important mentor; an outspoken feminist, she is willing to criticize wrongdoing from all sides.

This is a profoundly ethical novel. It refutes both-sides-ism by asking: what do you do when there are more than two sides, and all of them are wrong? What do you owe to your parents, your brothers, your beloved childhood friend, or your people? And what do you owe to righteousness and truth? Nothing is perfect in an impossible situation, but Sashi tries to do her best.

Translation is another important component of this novel. At first, as a Tamil speaker, it annoyed me that Ganeshananthan translated everything. Then I came to realize that this translation was deliberate. The novel is didactic in its project to educate readers about the Sri Lankan Civil War, but does this without sacrificing either characterization or moral complexity. The translation of the Tamil language mirrors attempts to translate the atrocities done to the Tamil people. Some things can only be translated imperfectly. And for those who do speak Tamil, there are some parts of the novel, in which not a word of Tamil appears, that only we will understand. This book is a masterful exploration of language, history, violence, family, ethics