“I grew up on stories about northern Sri Lanka and specifically the city of Jaffna in the 1980s. (January 3, 2023, Penguin Random House, 368 pages.) A recent episode of fiction/non/fiction, in which Sittenfeld interviews Ganeshananthan about her decades-long process of drafting and rewriting the novel, works as a fun companion condiment. Brotherless Night is a hearty meal on its own, just packed with satisfying, literary nutrients and flavors. Set in Sri Lanka in the 1980s, the action takes place at the beginning of a decades-long civil war. In the first photo, from 2020, Ganeshananthan holds up an unwieldy book draft and, in the second photo, from 2023, she displays a glossy hardcover.īrotherless Night follows Sashi, a young woman who aspires to study medicine, and her four brothers who join the Tamil Tigers’ fight for independence.

Earlier this year, Sittenfeld shared a side-by-side photo spread celebrating Ganeshananthan’s new novel and showing, not telling, that good books take time. She’s the author of the acclaimed 2008 novel Love Marriage, an Associate Professor in the University of Minnesota’s Creative Writing Program, co-host of the fiction/non/fiction podcast, and the occasional star of her friend and fellow author Curtis Sittenfeld’s Twitter posts. Ganeshananthan’s literary career includes an impressive list of accolades. The post-holiday deadheart of winter has passed, but the early sunset reading season isn’t over yet! From a memoir mashup to climate anxiety poems to a major publishing house blockbuster, these Minnesota authors will keep readers in words through all of 2023’s false springs and icy sidewalk treachery.

Brotherless night book