-
Your next favorite book
is waiting.
Summary | Discuss | Reviews | More Information | Read-Alikes
A Novel
by V. V. Ganeshananthan
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).
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.
What are you reading this week? (3/20/2025)
Just finished Fagin The Thief, Held by Anne Michaels, and re-reading Beautyland (one of my favorite books of last year) for book group last week. Now digging into Dream Count by Chimamanda Adichie, and then Brotherless Night by VV Ganeshananthan
-Michelle_H
Women's Prize, 2024
"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)
"Searing and intimate." —Publishers Weekly
"Ganeshananthan is a writer of remarkable restraint." —The New York Times Book Review
"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
This information about Brotherless Night was first featured
in "The BookBrowse Review" - BookBrowse's membership magazine, and in our weekly "Publishing This Week" newsletter. Publication information is for the USA, and (unless stated otherwise) represents the first print edition. The reviews are necessarily limited to those that were available to us ahead of publication. If you are the publisher or author and feel that they do not properly reflect the range of media opinion now available, send us a message with the mainstream reviews that you would like to see added.
Any "Author Information" displayed below reflects the author's biography at the time this particular book was published.
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.
If you liked Brotherless Night, try these:
by Shobha Rao
Published 2019
A searing, electrifying debut novel set in India and America, for readers of Rupi Kaur, about the extraordinary bond between two girls driven apart by circumstances but relentless in their search for one another.
by Nayomi Munaweera
Published 2017
From Nayomi Munaweera, the award-winning author of Island of a Thousand Mirrors, comes the confession of a woman, driven by the demons of her past to commit a single and possibly unforgivable crime.
by Shobha Rao
Published 2017
The twelve paired stories in Shobha Rao's An Unrestored Woman trace their origins to the formation of India and Pakistan in 1947, but they transcend that historical moment.
L.A. Women by Ella Berman
Two ambitious writers in 1960s LA face betrayal when one writes a novel based on the other's life.
Your guide toexceptional books
BookBrowse seeks out and recommends the best in contemporary fiction and nonfiction—books that not only engage and entertain but also deepen our understanding of ourselves and the world around us.
