Jaffna, 1981. Sixteen-year-old Sashi wants to become a doctor. But over the next decade, a vicious civil war tears through her home, and her dream spins off course as she sees her four beloved brothers and their friend K swept up in the mounting violence. Desperate to act, Sashi accepts K’s invitation to work 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 Indian peacekeepers arrive only to commit further atrocities, Sashi begins to question where she stands. When one of her medical school professors, a Tamil feminist and dissident, invites her to join a secret project documenting human rights violations, she embarks on a dangerous path that will change her forever.
I’ve been on a big of a Sri Lankan binge (…3 novels, but that’s 3 more than usual) recently, and Sashi’s story of becoming a field medic in the middle of the civil war was my favourite of the three.
Brotherless Night is an excellent book that got my attention and broke my heart a few times, without just being sad. It’s full of anger and love and hope and all these things that make stories worth telling.