Brotherless Night: 'Blazingly brilliant' CELESTE NG

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V. Ganeshananthan has been one of those books where the more I think about it, the more I like it and I keep thinking about it.

Although she doesn't agree with the rebellion as they commit many atrocities as well, Sashi makes the decision to provide medical care for the rebels but questions helping the rebellion. The Sri Lankan Civil War has been covered time and time again in contemporary literature, but it is Ganeshananthan's warm prose that ambles the reader alongside Sashi and her journey. Sometimes there were cobras in the bunkers; sometimes after a storm foul smelling water filled them and we rose from them rank and cold. It's told from the perspective of a character who was an ordinary person living in Jaffna, even though she eventually became affiliated with the Tigers it was because of her commitment to healing people, rather than any political ideology. Imagine the places you grew up, the places you studied, places that belonged to your people, burned.

In 1981 Jaffna, sixteen-year-old Sashikala “Sashi” Kulenthiren dreams of becoming a doctor just like her eldest brother Niranjan and her late grandfather who was a renowned physician in Colombo. The story is told by Sashi, who at 16 lives with her mum, dad, and 4 brothers in a village in Jaffna. Nearly all the men and boys in Sashi's life join the Tamil Tigers and pain and loss become her only constants.

The story begins just before the Sri Lankan civil war starts as the discrimination against Tamils is growing culminating in the "Black July" pogroms against the Tamils in the summer of 1983. All of this is bookended by a prologue and last chapter set in New York as the narrator looks from afar at the brutal ending of the civil war.And that's what I think is the epitome of good literature - delicious to the ear and encouraging to the curious mind. I often do not love historical fiction because it bends real and momentous events to fit some ultimately tiny story.