Historical Fiction · MelancholicSixteen-year-old Sashi in Jaffna dreams of becoming a doctor while her family is caught up in the civil war
Brotherless Night
A teenager in Jaffna who wants to be a doctor watches her family drawn into Sri Lanka's civil war
Sashikala "Sashi" Kulenthiren is sixteen and lives in Jaffna. She dreams of becoming a doctor like her grandfather, while her family is caught up in the conflict of the Sri Lankan civil war. The scenes are set in Jaffna and Colombo, and the novel uses second-person narration, which the novelist Omar El Akkad called one of its most interesting stylistic elements. Penguin published it on January 3, 2023, and it also won the Carol Shields Prize for Fiction.
More about this book
Who
Sashikala Kulenthiren, called Sashi, and her family.
World
Sri Lanka during the civil war, in Jaffna and Colombo.
What makes it different
Second-person narration.
Feel
Serious and absorbing.
Page count and cover shown for: Selected edition
Further reading
- Brotherless NightWikipedia