Brotherless Night

Sashikala Kulenthiren is sixteen in the early 1980s, living in Jaffna and determined to become a doctor, when the long Sri Lankan civil war begins to swallow her world. As ethnic violence between the Tamil minority and the Sinhalese-dominated state escalates, her four brothers and the young man she loves are pulled into the orbit of the Tamil Tigers. Sashi takes a job at a field hospital run by the militants, where she treats the wounded of a movement whose tactics she comes to question. Spanning years of loss, displacement, and impossible loyalty, the novel follows Sashi as she becomes a quiet witness to atrocities committed by every side, and as she holds onto her dream of healing in a place built on harm. Based on sixteen years of research, the book is a portrait of one woman's conscience under the weight of war.