V.V. Ganeshananthan: On the Lives of Ordinary People in Literary Fiction
Author V.V. Ganeshananthan discusses what changed in the two decades of working on her new literary novel, Brotherless Night.
V.V. Ganeshananthan is the author of 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 other publications.
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 board of directors 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. Find her on Twitter, Facebook, and Instagram.
In this post, V.V. discusses what changed in the two decades of working on her new literary novel, Brotherless Night, her advice for other writers, and more!
Name: V.V. Ganeshananthan
Literary agent: Stephanie Cabot
Book title: Brotherless Night
Publisher: Random House
Release date: January 3, 2023
Genre/category: Literary fiction
Previous titles: Love Marriage
Elevator pitch for the book: A young Tamil woman growing up in Jaffna at the beginning of the Sri Lankan civil war dreams of being a doctor. As her four beloved brothers and their friend are swept up in rising violence from the state, Indian peacekeepers, and Tamil militants, she begins to work as a medic, and struggles to find her own way to political and moral integrity.
IndieBound | Bookshop | Amazon
[WD uses affiliate links.]
What prompted you to write this book?
I wanted to write a book centered on Tamil civilians, and specifically Tamil women, set during the Sri Lankan civil war, in Jaffna. Some of my own heroes are dissident Tamil feminists who lived through this time period and documented human rights violations by the Sri Lankan state, Indian peacekeepers, and Tamil militants, including the Tamil Tigers.
I also wanted to document the lives and efforts of ordinary people to resist the increasing violence of their society, especially because some of that history has been intentionally diminished, erased, altered, and omitted from the common record.
How long did it take to go from idea to publication? And did the idea change during the process?
I wrote the first part of this novel in the spring of 2004 after stumbling on an intriguing bit of research in 2003, and Brotherless Night is being published in the spring of 2023, so this book has taken me about 20 years—nearly half my life.
The idea—or perhaps more accurately the plot!—has changed several times, not least because the Sri Lankan civil war ended in 2009. But the themes—siblings; revealing hidden histories; civilians; Tamil people; Jaffna; women; dissidents—have remained essentially the same.
Were there any surprises or learning moments in the publishing process for this title?
So many! To offer one example: My first novel, Love Marriage, had its title from the very first days I started working on it, and it never changed; one learning moment here that happened fairly late involved the novel’s title, which I feel strongly is the right one for the book, but which took me a long time to find. Late-breaking change can be good.
Were there any surprises in the writing process for this book?
At one point it had much longer sections set in New York; at one point it had a snappy reporter character, but since she seemed like a guest from a TV show or maybe His Girl Friday, I cut her. I’d like to meet her again sometime, or return to the characters in New York, but they didn’t belong here.
On the other hand, as I followed the protagonist Sashi’s brothers to see what happened to them, I unexpectedly discovered that this was a story about siblings. I had cut a brother character out of Love Marriage, so this was a fascinating surprise.
What do you hope readers will get out of your book?
I hope people will get a sense of what it was like to be an ordinary person living through these periods in these places. I wanted to portray the cost of violence and nationalism on the most intimate aspects of life. I also wanted to depict Tamil, civilian, feminist, and collective forms of resistance to violence and nationalism, which do exist, but which are perhaps underrepresented in fiction.
If you could share one piece of advice with other writers, what would it be?
I’m grateful to the people who believed I could bring this project to fruition—their encouragement was everything. Find the person who believes you’re a finisher!
Robert Lee Brewer is Senior Editor of Writer's Digest, which includes managing the content on WritersDigest.com and programming virtual conferences. He's the author of 40 Plot Twist Prompts for Writers: Writing Ideas for Bending Stories in New Directions, The Complete Guide of Poetic Forms: 100+ Poetic Form Definitions and Examples for Poets, Poem-a-Day: 365 Poetry Writing Prompts for a Year of Poeming, and more. Also, he's the editor of Writer's Market, Poet's Market, and Guide to Literary Agents. Follow him on Twitter @robertleebrewer.
