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Brotherless Night
V. V. Ganeshananthan
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Description for Brotherless Night
Paperback.
WINNER OF THE WOMEN'S PRIZE FOR FICTION 2024
'A masterpiece of historical fiction' MONICA ALI, chair of judges for the Women's Prize for Fiction
Sixteen-year-old Sashi wants to become a doctor. But over the next decade, as a vicious civil war tears through her hometown of Jaffna, her dream takes her on a different path as she sees those around her, including her four beloved brothers and their friend, get swept up in violent political ideologies and their consequences. Desperate to act, she must ask herself: is it possible for anyone to move through ... Read morelife without doing harm?
'An unforgettable account of a country and a family coming undone… Brotherless Night is a spectacular work of historical fiction' Guardian
'A heartbreaking exploration of a family fractured by civil war' BRIT BENNETT, bestselling author of THE VANISHING HALF
'Blazingly brilliant' CELESTE NG, bestselling author of LITTLE FIRES EVERYWHERE
'Stunningly great' Curtis Sittenfeld, bestselling author of ROMANTIC COMEDY, via Twitter
'Ganeshananthan is a superb writer...I wept at many points in this novel and I also wept when it was over' Sunday Times
WINNER OF THE CAROL SHIELDS PRIZE FOR FICTION
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Product Details
Place of Publication
London, United Kingdom
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About V. V. Ganeshananthan
V. V. Ganeshananthan is the author of Love Marriage, which was longlisted for the Women's Prize in 2008. Her work has appeared in Granta, The New York Times, and The Atlantic Monthly, among others. BROTHERLESS NIGHT draws on 16 years of research into the Sri Lankan civil war. Since 2017, Ganeshananthan has co-hosted a podcast called FICTION/NON/FICTION with novelist Whitney ... Read moreTerrell, featuring writers like Marlon James, Madeline Miller and Jia Tolentino. She teaches in the MFA program at the University of Minnesota. Show Less
Reviews for Brotherless Night
Brotherless Night is a brilliant, compelling and deeply moving novel that bears witness to the intimate and epic-scale tragedies of the Sri Lankan civil war. In rich, evocative prose, Ganeshananthan creates a vivid sense of time and place and an indelible cast of characters. Her commitment to complexity and clear-eyed moral scrutiny combines with spellbinding storytelling to render Brotherless Night ... Read morea masterpiece of historical fiction.
Monica Ali, chair of judges for the Women's Prize for Fiction V.V. Ganeshananthan's novel Brotherless Night reveals the moral nuances of violence, ever belied by black-and-white terminology
The New York Times
A beautiful, brilliant book... tender and fierce as it is mournful. It is unafraid to look directly at the worst of the violence and erasure we have perpetrated or allowed to happen, but is insistent that we can still choose to be better
Danielle Evans, author of The Office of Historical Corrections Riveting, heartbreaking and extraordinary for both its empathetic gaze and its clear-eyed depiction of the brutality of war, Brotherless Night is a masterpiece
Star Tribune
Visceral, historical, emotional, it is 300 pages of must-read
Women's Prize judge Anna Whitehouse Brotherless Night is my favorite kind of novel, one so rich and full of movement that it's only later I realize how much I have learned. V. V. Ganeshananthan drew me in from the very first line, and the intricacies of her characters' lives made it easy to stay
Sara Novic, New York Times bestselling author of TRUE BIZ Prepare to have your heart well and truly pummelled by this searing story about a young Tamil woman growing up as the Sri Lankan civil war explodes around her . . . at times, it's hard to remember that this rich and nuanced novel isn't actually a memoir - so convincing is Sashi's voice and so compelling her story
Bookseller, Book of the Month (preview)
A devastating look at the cost of war and choosing sides
Times Summer Reads
Moving and rapturous... equal parts heartbreak and rage, unravelling the tragedy of Sri Lanka's civil war with a family saga of violence, loss, impossible choices and astounding courage
Shehan Karunatilaka, Booker Prize-winning author of The Seven Moons of Maali Almeida A careful, vivid exploration of what's lost within a community when life and thought collapse toward binary conflict [...] a novel for our own country in this odd time.
New Yorker
Intimate in tone, yet epic in scope, the book captures the devastating losses and moral complexities of living through a period of political turmoil. It is a worthy winner of the Women’s prize
Guardian Summer Reading
Through this moving story, Ganeshananthan traces the human aspects of war-the physical losses and tragedies as well as the conflicts of values that are often the true battlefields . . . [she] forces the reader to discard a binary description of the world in favor of a more complex, human one
BookPage, starred review
Brotherless Night is a spectacular work of historical fiction: thoroughly researched, brimming with outrage and compassion, and full of indelible imagery.
Guardian
A searing and intimate depiction of the Sri Lankan civil war from the point of view of an aspiring doctor . . . Ganeshananthan credibly captures the horrors and pain of the conflict felt by those caught between loyalties. It all makes for a convincing and illuminating war novel
Publishers Weekly
A beautifully written story of resilience, loss, human connection and survival amidst the complexities and violence of war
Ms Magazine
I read and very much admired
Michael Chabon, Pulitzer Prize-winning author of The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay Sashi's storytelling is a perfect fit for the delicate balance she is forced to walk by virtue of living in a society where running afoul of the dominant forces, saying the wrong thing, leveling too impassioned a rebuke, can prove a capital offense
Omar El Akkad
New York Times Book Review
A remarkable unflinching novel that delicately, with surgical precision, exposes the deep wound at the heart of a long cruel war
Romesh Gunesekera, author of Reef A real eye-opener of a book
Good Housekeeping
Ganeshananthan is a superb writer...I wept at many points in this novel and I also wept when it was over
Sunday Times
When we return to New York two decades later we've begun to understand how the Tamil 'terrorists' defy this label as much as any other. Ganeshanathan triumphs in her portrait of them as complex individuals - 'people you might know or love'
Spectator
A worthy winner of this year's Women's Prize for Fiction, Brotherless Night is one of those novels whose brilliant storytelling sweeps you up. It tells the heart-rending tale of Sashi, a young Tamil woman growing up as the Sri Lankan civil war ranges around her, and explores timeless lessons about connection and survival.'
The i Paper - best paperbacks for summer
With immense compassion and deep moral complexity, V. V. Ganeshananthan brings us an achingly moving portrait of individual and societal grief. "I want you to understand," the narrator of BROTHERLESS NIGHT insists, and by the end of this blazingly brilliant novel, we do: that in a world full of turmoil, human connections and shared stories can teach us how - and as importantly, why - to survive.
CELESTE NG, bestselling author of LITTLE FIRES EVERYWHERE A heart-breaking exploration of a family fractured by civil war. This beautiful, nuanced novel follows a young doctor caught within conflicting ideologies as she tries to save lives. I couldn't put this book down
BRIT BENNETT, bestselling author of THE VANISHING HALF Stunningly great
Curtis Sittenfeld, bestselling author of RODHAM, via Twitter A beautiful, brilliant book - it gives an accounting of the unimaginable losses suffered by a family and by a country, but it is as tender and fierce as it is mournful. It is unafraid to look directly at the worst of the violence and erasure we have perpetrated or allowed to happen, but is insistent that we can still choose to be better
Danielle Evans, author of The Office of Historical Corrections Brotherless Night is my favorite kind of novel, one so rich and full of movement that it's only later I realize how much I have learned. Ganeshananthan drew me in from the very first line, and the intricacies of her characters' lives made it easy to stay
Sara Novic, author of True Biz Show Less