Brotherless Night, V. V. Ganeshananthan
Brotherless Night, V. V. Ganeshananthan
List: $22.50 | Sale: $15.75
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Brotherless Night

Author: V. V. Ganeshananthan

Narrator: Nirmala Rajasingam

Unabridged: 13 hr 28 min

Format: Digital Audiobook Download

Published: 01/17/2023


Synopsis

New York Times Book Review Editors’ Choice • A courageous young Sri Lankan woman tries to protect her dream of becoming a doctor in this “heartbreaking exploration of a family fractured by civil war” (Brit Bennett, #1 New York Times bestselling author of The Vanishing Half).

“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.”—Nathan Heller, The New Yorker

AN NPR BEST BOOK OF THE YEAR • WINNER OF THE CAROL SHIELDS PRIZE FOR FICTION, THE WOMEN’S PRIZE FOR FICTION, AND THE ASIAN PRIZE FOR FICTION • FINALIST FOR THE MINNESOTA BOOK AWARD

Jaffna, 1981. Sixteen-year-old Sashi wants to become a doctor. But over the next decade, a vicious civil war tears through her home, and her dream spins off course as she sees her four beloved brothers and their friend K swept up in the mounting violence. Desperate to act, Sashi accepts K’s invitation to work 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 Indian peacekeepers arrive only to commit further atrocities, Sashi begins to question where she stands. When one of her medical school professors, a Tamil feminist and dissident, invites her to join a secret project documenting human rights violations, she embarks on a dangerous path that will change her forever.

Set during the early years of Sri Lanka’s three-decade civil war, 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.

Reviews

Goodreads review by Michael on March 12, 2025

*** Congrats on winning the 2024 Women's Prize for Fiction! 'Brotherless Night,' an ambitious novel about Sri Lankan civil war, wins $150K prize - NPR The Carol Shields Prize for Fiction, honoring literature by women. --------------- There is a civil war going on in Sri Lanka in 1981- and sixteen-year-o......more

Goodreads review by Meike on June 16, 2024

Winner of the Women's Prize for Fiction 2024 A social realist novel about a young woman growing up in the 1980's during the Sri Lankan Civil War: Set mostly in Jaffna, our narrator is teenage Sashi who works hard to become a doctor, but her Tamil family gets swept up in the turmoil around them. Early......more

Goodreads review by Jsiva on April 29, 2024

I felt inspired and proud that such voices of dissent were able to speak out in their own way. Voices that spoke for all the people that were caught in the literal crossfire. People who found out their heroes were going to coerce, threaten, steal from and kill them. Whose solidarity would cause many......more

Goodreads review by Thomas on April 06, 2024

An important book about a teenage girl who aspires to be a doctor, whose dreams get caught in the crossfires of the Sri Lankan Civil War. V.V. Ganeshananthan does a great job of portraying the devastating and horrifying mistreatment of the Tamils in this context. I also thought she effectively showe......more

Goodreads review by Summer on February 02, 2023

Brotherless night is set in 1981 and takes place during the Sri Lankan civil way. The story centers around 16-year-old Sashi. Sashi dreams of becoming a doctor just like her eldest brother but after the violence of the war begins, her entire world and everything she knows turns upside down. Sashi soo......more


Quotes

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)