Brotherless Night

"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, bestselling author of THE VANISHING HALF 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 her on a different path as she watches those around her, including her four beloved brothers and their best friend, 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?"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"Stunningly great" Curtis Sittenfeld, bestselling author of RODHAM, via Twitter

V.V. Ganeshananthan's novel Brotherless Night reveals the moral nuances of violence, ever belied by black-and-white terminology . . . Perhaps Ganeshananthan's finest achievement is showing, with meticulous accuracy, what it feels like to inhabit a day-to-day life onto which someone else, from the privilege of great distance, can throw a word like "terrorism," and be done, 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, 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, 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, Riveting, heartbreaking and extraordinary for both its empathetic gaze and its clear-eyed depiction of the brutality of war, Brotherless Night is a masterpiece

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 Terrell, about the intersection of literature and the news, featuring writers like Marlon James, Madeline Miller and Jia Tolentino. She teaches in the MFA program at the University of Minnesota.

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