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. (From Random House)

Brotherless Night won the $205K Carol Shields Prize for Fiction and the U.K. Women's Prize.

Ganeshananthan is an American writer and journalist of Ilankai Tamil descent. She served as the vice president of the South Asian Journalists Association, on the board of the Asian American Writers' Workshop and is a current board member of the boards of the American Institute for Sri Lankan Studies and the Minnesota Prison Writing Workshop. She teaches at the University of Minnesota and co-host a podcast called Fiction/Non/Fiction. Her first novel, Love Marriage, was longlisted for the Women's Prize.