“Speaking the Unspeakable: The Narrative Ethics of Silence in V.V. Ganeshananthan’s Brotherless Night”

Abstract

V.V. Ganeshananthan’s novel Brotherless Night reimagines the Civil War of Sri Lanka through the intimate perspective of the protagonist, Sashi, a Tamil woman who becomes the voice of both a witness and a survivor of violence. This research paper explores how the author constructs silence as a complex moral and political act rather than a simple absence of speech. By considering the novel within the frameworks of postcolonialism and trauma, this study argues that silence in Brotherless Night functions as both a form of ethical resistance to the dominant Sinhala nationalist discourse and a strategy of survival. The restrained narration by Sashi reflects the psychological tension between remembering and forgetting, between testifying and protecting the unspeakable.

The study further examines how the narrative redefines the concept of voice for marginalized Tamil communities, especially women whose stories have been excluded from mainstream historical accounts. Drawing on theoretical insights from Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak, Judith Butler, and Cathy Caruth, the analysis demonstrates how Ganeshananthan’s prose captures the fragile space between trauma and narration, where silence becomes a language of moral responsibility. The novel’s fragmented storytelling, personal memory, and reflective tone resist the linearity of official war histories, offering instead an alternative archive rooted in empathy and emotional truth. This paper contends that the novel transforms literature into a site of witness and reconciliation. By turning silence into mode of remembrance, Ganeshananthan restores dignity to silenced Tamil voices and also confronts the ethical dimensions of speaking, listening, and remembering in post-war Sri Lanka.