‘Brotherless Night’: A powerful novel about waiting and resisting during Sri Lanka’s civil war

“I recently sent a letter to a terrorist I used to know.”

This opening line of VV Ganeshananthan’s Brotherless Night sets out some of the core ideas of the novel. Set in conflict-torn Sri Lanka, the book explores the obvious political tensions between various factions involved in a prolonged civil war but also, more importantly, traces the often-unchronicled histories of gendered trauma and resistance in war-ravaged cultures. Establishing a dialogue with the reader, Sashikala Kulenthiren, protagonist and narrator, says she used to be “what you would call” a terrorist, herself. “We were civilians first. You must understand: that word, terrorist, is too simple for the history we have lived...How could one word be enough? But I am going to say it anyway, because it is the language you know, and it will help you to understand who we were, what we were called, and who we have truly become.”

In this simple yet definitive act of separating herself from the reader, the “you” who is outside of her personal and political history, Sashi becomes both witness to and transcriber of a people’s history. Starting with her already tumultuous question of what turns a civilian into a terrorist, the book poses several...

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