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V. V. Ganeshanathan

Forfatter af Love Marriage

3+ Works 365 Members 72 Reviews

Om forfatteren

V. V. Ganeshananthan served for a year as the Writer in Residence at Phillips Exeter Academy.

Omfatter også følgende navne: V. V. Ganeshananthan, Vasugi Ganeshananthan

Image credit: Preston Merchant

Værker af V. V. Ganeshanathan

Love Marriage (2008) 238 eksemplarer
Brotherless Night (2023) 126 eksemplarer

Associated Works

The Best American Nonrequired Reading 2014 (2014) — Bidragyder — 144 eksemplarer
Granta 109: Work (2009) — Bidragyder — 116 eksemplarer
Flashed: Sudden Stories in Comics and Prose (2016) — Bidragyder — 6 eksemplarer

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Jaffna, Sri Lanka in the early 1980’s. There are six children, four brothers and a sister from one family and another boy from down the street, They are involved in their normal activities and dreams: three hope to be doctors, two engineers and the youngest undecided.

But then war breaks out between the ethnic Tamil minority and the Sinhalese government. It quickly becomes bloody and the families are swept up in the maelstrom of fighting and death of protracted civil war.
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One of the Tamil groups, the Tamil Tigers fight not only the government groups but other Tamil groups. One brother is killed; three of the group join the Tigers. The girl, Sashi, from whose perspective the story is told. goes on to medical school but is also swept up into helping the Tigers when the neighbor boy K brings her a wounded Tiger to help.

There is no place to hide. Childhood homes are destroyed or commandeered. Friends, acquaintances and teachers die, and even the Indian troops brought in to establish order rape and pillage.

Finally, although a lucky few Tamils have escaped to other countries, the Tamil civilians are caught between the Tamil Tigers making a last stand at the ocean’s edge and the Sinhalese troops. Each side kills the civilians trying to escape.

This is an intense, devastating novel detailing the complexities of this civil war – making it understandable and human. The characters were diverse, believable and well rounded. I mourned the deaths in this novel and I was sad when the story was over. 5 stars
… (mere)
 
Markeret
streamsong | 7 andre anmeldelser | May 13, 2024 |
An excellent and informative read. I did not know much about the civil war in Sri Lanka prior to reading this book

In Jaffna, 1981, sixteen year old Sashi dreams of becoming a doctor. She lives with her two parents , and her brothers, Niranjan, age 25, Daylan, 19, Seelan, 17 and her younger brother , Aran , 13. The family is Tamil , and lives a happy enough life, until the civil war tears the family apart, with some of her brothers joining the Tamil Tigers ( the movement ) and one resisting. As time goes on , Sashi is accepted into medical school. A friend of hers , K, secretly brings an injured Tamil Tiger to her for treatment. She treats him, but as K says, p.158 "But you don't believe in the movement." Sashi replies "It's not safe to let you in, it's not safe to to turn you away - it's not right to let a man die in the hall of a medical school when there are supplies to help him just a metres away. What would you have me do? " From there, Sashi, very conflicted, ends up secretly serving as a medic in a field hosptial for the Tamil Tigers.

Sashi bears witness to the warring factions of the Sinhalese government, Tamil militants and the Indian government peacekeeping factions. All committed atrocities This is a difficult but compassionate read , filled with the moral complexity of this war.

Highly recommended.
… (mere)
 
Markeret
vancouverdeb | 7 andre anmeldelser | May 6, 2024 |
Tyger Tyger burning bright

Media: Audio
Read by Nirmala Rajasingam
Length: 13 hrs and 28 mins

Written in the form of a chronical, Brotherless Night tells the fictionalized story of a young woman’s life during the early years of the Sri Lanka civil war. It’s told from the vantage point of the young woman whose journey ends in her settling in New York before the civil war has ended.

The story starts with sixteen year old Sashi, the young Tamil girl who is living comfortably with her family in Sri Lanka. But there is unrest in their country.

In 1983 ethnic tensions erupted into an all-out civil war which was to last 25 years. The war was fought between the Tamil Tigers (predominantly Hindu) and the Sinhalese government forces (predominantly Buddhist). After some years the Indian government sent troops - supposedly as peace keepers, but becoming another source of violence.

At times I was reminded of Adiche’s Half of a Yellow Sun set in present day Nigeria, where the ethnic divisions, encouraged by the colonizing British caused problems when they left after favoring an ethinic minority. In Nigerians it was the Biafrans, in Sri Lanka it was the Tamils.

Knowing something of modern Sri Lankan history is a help in reading Brotherless Nights, but is not necessary. The story stops before the war ends.

I’m not going to give a synopsis of the book as you can easily find it elsewhere. But a few aspects of what is essentially a piece of historical fiction stood out.

The format is that of a chronical. Sashi is writing down the events as she experiences them. Where do these events come from? They are fiction but based on actual history. The chronicle is told in first person by the made-up character of Sashi. Ganeshanathan has researched the history, the participants and events, from her home in the U.S where she was born of Sri Lankan parents.

Knowing this I was disconcerted at times. It reads as if it was autobiographical but we know it is not. Most events are either anecdotal or completely made-up, as are the characters. So there’s a lack of authenticity though of course similar events occurred many times, and the characters are based on real people or amalgamations thereof. The descriptions are so realistic that they become believable but we know they are not.

It’s a chronical, but fictionalized and there’s some editorializing. There’s also some introspection. In the final chapter Sashi looks back on her life and the historical records (which is in fact the book we are reading) which she has been maintaining in order that the truth gets out. We are reading about the book we are reading.

There’s also the way that Sashi talks directly to the reader with questions like “What would you do in such a situation?” and, “Do you think he’ll answer the door?”. The first time this happened I thought that I’d misread and had to go back to check, but then I got used to it. I half-expected to find out that Sashi was in fact addressing one of her brothers, and that remains a possibility for me.

I liked Brotherless Night. I ended up liking Ganeshanathan‘s style, though at first I thought I would tire of the novel. I became engrossed. I liked the nuance and the political detail, some of which was new to me.

I do wonder whether Ganeshanathan will write another novel. The only other novel she’s written to date was her debut, Love Marriage and it was during the writing of that novel that she came upon the idea of Brotherless Night wich took her over ten years. She’s American now and I feel she will need to move on. The success of Brotherless Night lies a lot in its subject matter.

The timing of Brotherless Night is apt for the 2023-4 reader. With the terrorism, the accusation of human shields, the collateral damage, the reader has to keep her mind to stop fleeting to the situation in Gaza.

Even with my reservations I have to highly recommend this book. There’s something about it that speaks to the reader that is beyond its exhaustive research. It speaks to the heart.
… (mere)
 
Markeret
kjuliff | 7 andre anmeldelser | Mar 28, 2024 |
4.5⭐rounded up!

“Imagine the places you grew up, the places you studied, places that belonged to your people, burned. But I should stop pretending that I know you. Perhaps you do not have to imagine. Perhaps your library, too, went up in smoke.”

In 1981 Jaffna, sixteen-year-old Sashikala “Sashi” Kulenthiren dreams of becoming a doctor just like her eldest brother Niranjan and her late grandfather who was a renowned physician in Colombo. But as the civil war in Sri Lanka intensifies and violence ensues between the warring factions- the Sinhalese government and the Tamil militants who are fighting for an independent state free of persecution of the Tamils, life as she has known it shall be changed forever. When one of her brothers loses his life in an act of anti-Tamil violence and two of her brothers and a family friend join the “movement” Sashi finds herself making choices and being drawn into a life she had never imagined for herself- a medical student also working as a medic for those serving in the movement. As she bears witness to the politics, the violence, and the activism of the 1980s she eventually embarks on exposing the true plight of civilians caught in the crossfire between the warring factions of the Sinhalese government, Tamil militants and the Indian peacekeeping forces through the written word with the help of one of her professors taking risks that could endanger her life and those of her associates.

“I want you to understand: it does not matter if you cannot imagine the future. Still, relentless, it comes.”

Brotherless Night by V.V. Ganeshananthan is a compelling read. Set in the early stages of Sri Lanka’s three-decade civil war, the author takes us through the turbulence of 1980s Jaffna/Colombo including Black July and its aftermath, combining historical fact with fiction. The author writes with passion yet does not fill the pages with any excess – be it words or sentimentality. Narrated in the first person by our protagonist, Sashi, the tone is direct, often matter-of-fact yet there is much depth to the words, the characters and their stories. At times this book reads as a true account rather than a work of fiction. This is one of those rare books that is difficult to read yet impossible to put down.

Many thanks to the author, Random House Publishing Group and NetGalley for the digital ARC of this exceptionally well-written novel. All opinions expressed in this review are my own.

“It did not occur to me to count or prove, to measure our losses for history or for other people to understand or believe. I did not collect the evidence of my own destroyed life; I did not know people would ask me for it.”
… (mere)
 
Markeret
srms.reads | 7 andre anmeldelser | Sep 4, 2023 |

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Værker
3
Also by
4
Medlemmer
365
Popularitet
#65,883
Vurdering
½ 3.6
Anmeldelser
72
ISBN
19
Sprog
3

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