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Brotherless Night: A Novel Spiral-Bound | January 3, 2023
V. V. Ganeshananthan
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Brotherless Night: A Novel
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A courageous young woman tries to protect her dream of becoming a doctor as civil war devastates Sri Lanka in this searing novel.
Jaffna, 1981. Sixteen-year-old Sashi wants to become a doctor. But over the next decade, as a vicious civil war subsumes Sri Lanka, her dream takes a different path as she watches those around her, including her four beloved brothers, get swept up in violent political ideologies and their consequences. She must ask herself: Is it possible for anyone to move through life without doing harm?
Sashi begins working as a medic at a field hospital for the militant Tamil Tigers, who, following years of state discrimination and violence, are fighting for a separate homeland for Sri Lanka’s Tamil minority. But after the Tigers murder one of her teachers and the arrival of Indian peacekeepers brings further atrocities, she turns to another one of her professors, a feminist and dissident who invites Sashi to join her in a dangerous, secret project of documenting human rights violations as a mode of civil resistance.
Set during the early years of Sri Lanka’s thirty-year civil war, and based on sixteen years of research, Brotherless Night is a heartrending portrait of one woman’s moral journey and a testament to both the enduring impact of war and the bonds of home.
Story Locale:Sri Lanka
Jaffna, 1981. Sixteen-year-old Sashi wants to become a doctor. But over the next decade, as a vicious civil war subsumes Sri Lanka, her dream takes a different path as she watches those around her, including her four beloved brothers, get swept up in violent political ideologies and their consequences. She must ask herself: Is it possible for anyone to move through life without doing harm?
Sashi begins working as a medic at a field hospital for the militant Tamil Tigers, who, following years of state discrimination and violence, are fighting for a separate homeland for Sri Lanka’s Tamil minority. But after the Tigers murder one of her teachers and the arrival of Indian peacekeepers brings further atrocities, she turns to another one of her professors, a feminist and dissident who invites Sashi to join her in a dangerous, secret project of documenting human rights violations as a mode of civil resistance.
Set during the early years of Sri Lanka’s thirty-year civil war, and based on sixteen years of research, Brotherless Night is a heartrending portrait of one woman’s moral journey and a testament to both the enduring impact of war and the bonds of home.
Story Locale:Sri Lanka
Publisher: Penguin Random House
Original Binding: Hardcover
Pages: 368 pages
ISBN-10: 0812997158
Item Weight: 1.3 lbs
Dimensions: 6.5 x 1.2 x 9.5 inches
“Brotherless Night succeeds in telling all its stories—the historical and the personal, the factual and the ethical—as one, and that narrative has echoes. . . . This book, a careful, vivid exploration of what’s lost within a community when life and thought collapse toward binary conflict, rang softly for me as a novel for our own country in this odd time.”—The New Yorker
“Riveting, heartbreaking and extraordinary . . . Brotherless Night is a masterpiece.”—Minneapolis Star Tribune
“Ganeshananthan is a writer of remarkable restraint.”—The New York Times Book Review
“A blazingly brilliant novel . . . With immense compassion and deep moral complexity, V. V. Ganeshananthan brings us an achingly moving portrait of a world full of turmoil, but one in which human connections and shared stories can teach us how—and as importantly, why—to survive.”—Celeste Ng, New York Times bestselling author of Little Fires Everywhere
“The best historical fiction novels don’t just tell a great story—they reveal a side of history that their readers may not be familiar with. V. V. Ganeshananthan’s Brotherless Night does just that. . . . [It] is a powerful work of fiction; one that reminds the reader what it means to live through war, and stand as a witness to history.”—Town & Country
“A heartbreaking 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, #1 New York Times bestselling author of The Vanishing Half
“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 Nović, New York Times bestselling author of True Biz
“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
“Searing and intimate.”—Publishers Weekly
“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)
“Riveting, heartbreaking and extraordinary . . . Brotherless Night is a masterpiece.”—Minneapolis Star Tribune
“Ganeshananthan is a writer of remarkable restraint.”—The New York Times Book Review
“A blazingly brilliant novel . . . With immense compassion and deep moral complexity, V. V. Ganeshananthan brings us an achingly moving portrait of a world full of turmoil, but one in which human connections and shared stories can teach us how—and as importantly, why—to survive.”—Celeste Ng, New York Times bestselling author of Little Fires Everywhere
“The best historical fiction novels don’t just tell a great story—they reveal a side of history that their readers may not be familiar with. V. V. Ganeshananthan’s Brotherless Night does just that. . . . [It] is a powerful work of fiction; one that reminds the reader what it means to live through war, and stand as a witness to history.”—Town & Country
“A heartbreaking 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, #1 New York Times bestselling author of The Vanishing Half
“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 Nović, New York Times bestselling author of True Biz
“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
“Searing and intimate.”—Publishers Weekly
“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)
V. V. Ganeshananthan (she/her) is the author of the novels Brotherless Night (a New York Times Editors’ Choice) and Love Marriage, which was longlisted for the Women's Prize and named one of the best books of the year by The Washington Post. Her work has appeared in Granta, The New York Times, and The Best American Nonrequired Reading, among others. A former vice president of the South Asian Journalists Association, she has also served on the board of the Asian American Writers’ Workshop, and is presently a member of the boards of the American Institute for Sri Lankan Studies and the Minnesota Prison Writing Workshop. She teaches in the MFA program at the University of Minnesota and co-hosts the Fiction/Non/Fiction podcast on Literary Hub, which is about the intersection of literature and the news.
Author Residence: Minneapolis, MN
Author Hometown: Hartford, CT
Author Residence: Minneapolis, MN
Author Hometown: Hartford, CT