Welcome to Litsy!

This book was 18 years in the making and it‘s obvious that the author put her heart and soul into it. The way war creeps in and disrupts, the way sides are chosen, how violence erupts, the way people try to maintain a normal existence when chaos is all around. I think this book is extraordinary. 5 🌟. Vying for the top spot on my Women‘s Prize short list.

#MotivationalMonday

1) I have a whole week to myself with no set plans. I think this is a first since my kids were born.
2) This is Dahlia. My husband is her person. She will miss him and tolerate me.
3) I would like to fly and not anything small enough to be someone‘s dinner.
4) Finishing the tagged today.

Tagging everyone

@Cupcake12

Who is going to come to save us?

Sharon Butala is award-winning novelist and memoirist, currently based in Calgary. She‘s also a big reader who talks about her reading with insight and humor. Lucky me, she‘s now a regular guest on my channel for regular, long-form chats like this.

https://youtu.be/6saOgtOTosU?si=Jd7al30_VwoHDBgO

#WeekendReads

Will finish The Nun today and hopefully Brotherless Night tomorrow.

@rachelsbrittain

It was a daily brutality roulette.

Map (detail) from https://www.nationsonline.org/oneworld/map/sri_lanka_map.htm

Sashi, a Tamil girl determined to be a doctor, is 16 when this novel opens in 1981 in northern Sri Lanka. Before long, she and everyone around her are in the midst of a civil war. Her searing voice makes this novel unputdownable and unforgettable.

When I returned from the clinic, I flung myself not into bed or back into my studies, but into those volumes. Their words drained the night of terror. In the Colombo refugee camp, I had longed for a book to remove me from reality. With every chapter I read now, I felt not removed but partially returned to a safety I had thought entirely lost. I tethered my interior life to the pages.

You must understand: there is no single day on which a war begins. The conflict will collect around you gradually, the way carrion birds assemble around the vulnerable, until there are so many predators that the object of their hunger is not even visible. You will not be able to see yourself in the gathering crowd of those who would kill you.

Please don't look for me. I looked for them everywhere. Of course I did. My brothers. And also Κ.