Five Sibling Novel Selections
With Raksha Bandhan having just passed, we decided to pick out a few literary siblings that have lived long in the memory and span various eras. From Russia to India to Nigeria and beyond, these are books that explore the depths of one of the strongest familial bonds in various ways, and titles that have become classic works in their own right.
Fyodor Dostoevsky - The Brothers Karamazov, 1880
Dostoevsky’s final novel and a true classic, this huge masterwork is a family saga, a philosophical treatise and a theological drama, as well as many other things. The sprawling work that was first serialised in a Russian magazine is a portrait of a family, society, God, morality, and has been vastly influential to many of the twentieth century’s greatest writers, thinkers, philosophers and scientists.
Brigitte Reimann - Siblings, 1963
A groundbreaking post-War classic of German literature that has been recently rediscovered, Siblings is the story of a fundamental argument. Elisabeth and Uli are siblings. One wants to defect to West Germany after the closing of the border, the other believes in the socialist future of the East. But from this basic conceit, Reimann reveals so much more about German history, society and families.
Arundhati Roy - The God of Small Things, 1997
Arundhati Roy’s Booker winner and now classic debut novel is a family drama, a tale of social issues and linguistic games and much more, but at the heart of the story are the twins Rahel and Estha. Using disjointed narrative to convey generations of trauma and tell a divisive story that captured the imagination of much of the world, the book is now undeniably a part of the Indian canon.
Margaret Atwood - The Blind Assassin, 2000
Atwood needs no introduction as one of Canada’s greatest ever writers, and this story that begins with Iris explaining the day her sister drove off a bridge is hard to categorise. It is about family, but also a puzzle of a novel that contains layers of stories and spans great amounts of time. At its heart, it is the story of one sister told by another, but also one that explores everything from love to politics to feminism.
Oyinkan Braithwaite - My Sister The Serial Killer, 2018
A darkly comical and hugely lauded work that crosses various genre boundaries, this novel is, as the title suggests, the story of a woman whose sister begins killing ex-boyfriends and needs help with the clean-up. It’s satirical, incisive, and an easy read that examines how blood is thicker than water, and harder to get out of the carpet.