Content Warning: This section of the guide includes discussion of death and death by suicide.

Sashi begins the book by admitting that she is in communication with a terrorist and acknowledging that she herself could once have been categorized as a terrorist, which is a label that strikes fear and outrage in the minds of many. Yet she counterintuitively endeavors to portray herself (and, potentially, the unnamed terrorist correspondent) as a sympathetic figure. Her point here, and throughout the novel, is to call into question the label itself. She says, “[That] word, terrorist, is too simple for the history we have lived” (3). She believes that living through a decades-long civil war—wherein loyalties and alliances are changeable and recriminations and retributions are unimpeded by the rule of law or logic—requires a reframing of terms. Thus, Sashi challenges the traditional understanding of terrorism, portraying it not as an inherent identity but as a product of systemic violence and survival in extraordinary circumstances.

Sashi and the other characters in Brotherless Night live through a violent civil war and experience terror on many levels, whether it is meted out by the government, the militants, or the so-called peace-keeping forces that occupy the country. Ordinary people who live through such extraordinary events are often mere victims of much larger and more violent forces.