V. V. Ganeshananthan

V. V. Ganeshananthan is an American writer and journalist of Ilankai (Lankan) Tamil descent whose writing has appeared in »Granta«, »The New York Times«, and »The Best American Nonrequired Reading«, among others. She earned a MFA from the University of Iowa in 2005 and a MAin arts journalism from Columbia University’s in 2007. Ganeshananthan is a member of the boards of the American Institute for Sri Lankan Studies and the Minnesota Prison Writing Workshop. She currently teaches creative writing at the University of Minnesota. Ganeshananthan is the author of two novels: »Love Marriage« (2008) and »Brotherless Night« (2024).

In »Love Marriage«, the young narrator, the U.S.-born daughter of Sri Lankan Tamil immigrants, travels to Toronto to meet her dying uncle, who has spent most of his life as part of the militant Tamil Tigers. This framework forms the background for a family story told in fragmentary vignettes, in which several marriages and the Sri Lankan civil war take center stage.

In »Brotherless Night«, Ganeshananthan tells the story of 16-year-old Sashi, who lives in Jaffna, Sri Lanka, and dreams of becoming 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 Tamil Tigers, who, following years of state discrimination and violence, are fighting for a separate homeland for Sri Lanka’s Tamil minority. 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. »Brotherless Night is a spectacular work of historical fiction: thoroughly researched, brimming with outrage and compassion, and full of indelible imagery…. The novel has the intimacy of a memoir, the urgency of reportage, and the sweep and scale of the epic.« (»The Guardian«).

Ganeshananthan has received several fellowships for her work, including from the American Academy in Berlin, and is co-host of the literary podcast »Fiction/Non/Fiction«. She lives in Minnesota.

As of April 2024

Liebesheirat
btb
München, 2009
[Ü: Eva Bonné]

Hippocrates
In: Granta, 2010

K Becomes K
In: Ploughshares, 2013

Brotherless Night
Random House
New York, 2023