V. V. Ganeshanathan

The author won the 2024 Women’s Prize for Fiction for this book; I certainly understand why.

The novel is set in Jaffna, Sri Lanka. It focuses on 1981 to 1989, the earlier years of the Sri Lankan civil war between the Sinhalese-dominated government and Tamil separatist groups. The narrator is Sashi Kulenthiren, a Tamil, and the only daughter in a family with four sons. When the novel opens, she is sixteen and an aspiring doctor. One brother is killed in anti-Tamil riots and then two others join the militant Tamil Tigers. Once in medical school, Sashi’s friendship with K, a high-ranking member of the Tigers, leads her to become a medic in a Tigers’ field hospital, but she starts to question her role in the war.

I knew little about the Sri Lankan civil war, though I did know that the Tamil Tigers have been designated a terrorist group by several countries, including Canada. The book opens with Sashi addressing this issue; her opening sentence is “I recently sent a letter to a terrorist I used to know” and the first paragraph ends with her admission that she was once “what you would call a terrorist.” Her goal is to tell the story behind that label, to show that terrorists are made, not born. She emphasizes that in war people’s choices are often dictated by outside forces.

The minority Tamils are discriminated against and persecuted under majority Sinhalese rule so the emergence of groups like the Tigers fighting for a separate Tamil homeland is understandable. But then the Tigers, in order to establish their prominence, turn on other militant groups and civilians who for any reason are seen as a threat or disloyal. The killing of a respected teacher because he organized a cricket match between the boys of his school and the army team illustrates the extremism. The novel clearly shows that atrocities are committed by all involved in the war. Sashi embarks on documenting human rights violations committed not just by the Tamil Tigers, but by the Sri Lankan army and the Indian peacekeepers as well.

No side emerges as heroic. What is emphasized is the effects of war on ordinary people and families. Sashi’s family is torn apart, and she loses more than one loved one. As a medic, she sees how civilians suffer; her description of the rape of one young woman is horrific and heart-breaking. By recording the intimate and personal lives of people caught up in the war, the novel emphasizes the impact of war. Including the perspective of women adds to the novel’s effectiveness.

Several times, the narrator directly addresses the reader: “Imagine the places you grew up, the places you studied, places that belonged to your people, burned.” I see these direct pleas as challenging readers to have compassion for those caught in the middle of a war and to look for the truth behind the “official” stories told by the opposing sides of a conflict. Though the book is about the Sri Lankan civil war, the reader will clearly see parallels with what is currently happening in Ukraine and Gaza.

This is a coming-of-age tale, but it’s not just Sashi who learns and matures. The reader learns about the Sri Lankan civil war and is left pondering the answer to Sashi’s final questions: “Whose stories will you believe? For how long will you listen?”

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What a fantastic book. Set in Jaffna, Sri Lanka, it tells the story of Sashi and her four brothers who along with the rest of her family were caught up in the civil war between the Sinhalese and Tamil people. It is a story of a family slowly being dragged into the war, whether they wanted it or not, and the destruction this brings to the family and to the country.

At the start of the book Sashi is 16 and wants to be a doctor, working and studying hard. Her eldest brother is killed during an anti-Tamil riot and so her two brothers Seelan and Dayalan join the Tamil Tigers. But they are not the only ones and a friend, K, asks Sashi one evening to help save a colleague who has been shot. This she does even though she is only a first year medic and she is then drawn into the Tamil Tiger hospital to work. Three children now involved with the war and only one left at home refusing to become a part of it. Sashi discovers that she can disagree and argue with her father, unacceptable in Tamil families, and many painful truths are spoken.

What is so good about this book is that we are given the contradictions and other side of the argument, often in the same character. Sashi wants to help people at the hospital, to do no harm but she also helps out because she is in love with K. Eventually, she teams up with her professor and starts to write reports of atrocities from both the Sri Lankan army and Indian peacekeepers with first hand accounts, checked and verified so that they will be remembered and can be called on later down the line.

The book is a fictionalisation of events but the fictionalisation is more to do with the characters rather than the events. It is written by a journalist and I think you can tell, but it has such compassion when telling what are horrific events. I have to say that at points I thought I was reading a memoir and had to check that it was fictionalised. It is a book that shares the nuances of war rather than the black and white responses often seen.

Definitely one for the book club list.… (more)