Hi there, I'm Chloe Veltman and you're tuned in to NPR's Book of the Day.

Conflicts in far-off countries, especially those that took place decades ago,

can often feel remote to people here in the US if they register at all.

But Brotherless Night, a new novel by Vivi Ganesanthan, brings the devastation and turmoil of the Sri Lankan civil war into sharp relief.

In an interview with Here and Now's Deepa Fernandez, the author talks about the decision to tell her complex story

through the eyes of a young woman and her family, torn apart by their allegiances to each other and to the Tamil Tigers movement.

She also considers the war in the context of centuries of colonization by the Dutch,

the Portuguese and the English.

Here's Deepa Fernandez.

In the U.S., national security news can feel far away from daily life.

Distant wars, murky conflicts, diplomacy behind closed doors on our new show

Sources and Methods. NPR reporters on the ground bring you stories of real people

helping you understand why distant events matter here at home. Listen to sources and methods on the

NPR app or wherever you get your podcasts. A recent novel brings a conflict that might be a distant memory for many Americans into sharp

focus. Between 1983 and 2009, civil war between the majority Sinhalese government and the

minority Tamil insurgents, also known as the Tamil Tigers, devastated Sri Lanka.

The United Nations estimates that between 80 and 100,000 people were killed.

The book Brotherless Night looks at those years through the eyes of Sashi, who is 16 in 1981.

She lives with her parents and four brothers in the predominantly Tamil

community of Jaffna. Sashi wants to be a doctor, but her hopes are threatened by the increasing

violence and the pool of the Tamil tigers, not only on Sashi's community, but on her family

and eventually Sashi herself. The book, Brotherless Night, is written

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