Brotherless Night is a brilliant, compelling and deeply moving novel that bears witness to the intimate and epic-scale tragedies of the Sri Lankan civil war. In rich, evocative prose, Ganeshananthan creates a vivid sense of time and place and an indelible cast of characters. Her commitment to complexity and clear-eyed moral scrutiny combines with spellbinding storytelling to render Brotherless Night a masterpiece of historical fiction.

V.V. Ganeshananthan’s novel Brotherless Night reveals the moral nuances of violence, ever belied by black-and-white terminology

A beautiful, brilliant book… 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

Riveting, heartbreaking and extraordinary for both its empathetic gaze and its clear-eyed depiction of the brutality of war, Brotherless Night is a masterpiece

Visceral, historical, emotional, it is 300 pages of must-read

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

A devastating look at the cost of war and choosing sides

Moving and rapturous… equal parts heartbreak and rage, unravelling the tragedy of Sri Lanka’s civil war with a family saga of violence, loss, impossible choices and astounding courage

A careful, vivid exploration of what’s lost within a community when life and thought collapse toward binary conflict […] a novel for our own country in this odd time.