How Brotherless Night explores the theme of multiple allegiances

Sri Lankan-American author V.V. Brotherless Nightfollows the fortunes of young Sashikala Kulenthiren, a Sri Lankan Tamil teenager in the early 1980s, as the country plunges into ever-escalating violence and blatant apartheid-like policies. You will not even be able to see yourself in the gathering crowd of those who would kill you.” This multiple-allegiances theme also leads to some darkly funny scenes, none funnier than the one where Sashi’s feminist study circle is infiltrated, so to speak. It’s intense and it’s tragic at some level but I also feel like it’s one of the funnier scenes in the novel,” Ganeshananthan says, adding, “I am Sri Lankan, I am Tamil and I am a part of the diaspora. “Sashi’s family, especially her parents, are not hugely outspoken at the beginning of the book,” Ganeshananthan says.