SRI LANKA, FICTION

Brotherless Night
V. V. Ganeshananthan

This book is an epic. Our protagonist, Sashi, lives with her family in Jaffna, and is on track to get into medical school when the civil war takes off. Gradually the conflict envelops her four brothers, her whole city, and her whole country. We come of age with her as she grows as a Tamil woman and a doctor. I’m recommending it to someone travelling to Sri Lanka because it’s a novel but it’s so obviously written by an author with 15 years of experience as an investigative journalist. The story avoids easy good-and-evil distinctions, and you will recognise both places and people from history in these pages the more you read and learn. 

Recommended by Bri Lee who was last in Sri Lanka in 2024.
Follow Bri Lee’s reading and travels here.