Five Reasons to Read Brotherless Night

 [Brotherless Night, by V. V. Ganeshananthan recently won the Women’s Prize for fiction. Here are five reasons to read the book.]

“I knew that if a certain kind of person wanted something done, I should comply without asking too many questions.”

These lines from the introductory passage of the book sets the tone for ‘Brotherless Night’, the story of a young Tamil girl who dreams of becoming a doctor only to have her world torn apart by the growing unrest in North Sri Lanka.

 I would have loved to give the book more than five stars if I could, so here are five reasons (one for each star) why you should read the book:

 1. It provides a deep insight into a period that I lived through, but from a perspective that I was not exposed to. Growing up, I read about the escalation of the Sri Lankan conflict from the perspective of the IPKF, with occasional interviews of the leaders of the Tamil Eelam. This book talks of what it means to be Tamil in Jaffna- to witness the growth of power and violence in the region, and to be reluctantly pulled into the vortex.

 2. The book deals with what one family living in Jaffna goes through- of how events impact different people differently, of the push and pull of situations beyond their control, of how tragedy impacts people in different ways, of the secrets they cannot trust even their own family members with. The characters are deep and unpredictable in their predictability (or is it the other way round).

 3. The book is told from the perspective of a young woman, and raises important issues of patriarchy and control within the framework of internal war. Men go out and fight, women are expected to cook for them (even when women are asked to assist in field hospitals, it is the caregiving role they are expected to play). Yet, when things go wrong, it is women who resist in ways that men cannot.

 4. Though the book is a work of fiction, the research that the author put in is so deep that you wonder if it is actually a fictionalised account of someone she knows personally. Most of the key incidents are told from more than one perspective, and small details make you believe the author is describing a scene which she actually witnessed.

 5. The book is full of references to books. People gift books to each other, people make book recommendations, there is also a feminist book group! Your TBR may not thank you after reading this book because it will go up.

Since I wanted to give the book more than five stars, a personal reason why I loved reading the book- I loved the Tamizh words and phrases and the descriptions of familiar food!