Skip to main content

‘Don’t read just one book about Sri Lanka’: VV Ganeshananthan on her civil war novel

Women’s prize for fiction winner tells story of a family caught up in conflict in her second novel, Brotherless Night

Every couple of years VV Ganeshananthan would do a poll on Facebook asking people to nominate their saddest novel. The uncontested winner was Rohinton Mistry’s A Fine Balance, about India during the turbulent 70s and 80s, a novel that Ganeshananthan loves. Now, with her second novel, Brotherless Night, which on Thursday night was awarded the Women’s prize for fiction, the American novelist has written a story to rival Mistry’s 1995 weepy.

We are talking in her UK publisher’s office, in a room with a view of the US embassy. “I have to apologise for my nation for so many things,” she says with a resigned eye roll. The author, who trained as a journalist, teaches fiction and nonfiction at the University of Minnesota and also co-hosts the Lit Hub Fiction/Non/Fiction podcast, which was set up in 2017 after the election of Donald Trump to shine a light on current events through literature. Her first novel, Love Marriage, about two Tamil families, was longlisted for the Women’s prize (then the Orange prize) in 2009.

Continue reading...

from The Guardian https://ift.tt/tQrsJ9a
Labels:

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

England booed off after failing against Iceland once more in Euros warm-up

It was a long way from being the triumphant Euro 2024 send-off for Gareth Southgate and his England players at a sold-out and increasingly fretful Wembley. Never mind the result because it was not the main thing, however much it stirred memories of you-know-when against Iceland. It was the performance that raised the difficult questions, the worst one for quite some time and at exactly the wrong time. The home fans, thousands of whom made for the exits before the end, were forced to watch the second half – from about minute 55 onwards – through the gaps between their fingers. And it had not been great before that. Continue reading... from The Guardian https://ift.tt/4ndfQL0
Post a Comment
Read more

Manchester City in title driving seat after cruising to win at Leeds

The title stare-off becomes steelier with each week. Elland Road was at its raucous best and a highly motivated Leeds played well enough to ensure Manchester City rarely neared full stride. Nevertheless the leaders mastered the situation, showing they can win via set pieces when means of higher aesthetic merit elude them. Rodri and Nathan Aké proved the point with goals in each half, garnished later by Gabriel Jesus’ sixth in three matches and a Fernandinho daisycutter, and Pep Guardiola’s delight at the outcome was obvious. This had been a possible banana skin, with the potential leveller of such a highly charged atmosphere; instead City cruise on and Leeds, who are in genuine danger of going down, must seek more viable routes to safety. This encounter had an edge from the outset. It needed to, because the heat had been turned up on both teams. City would have expected Liverpool to achieve what was necessary at Newcastle; Leeds might not have banked on Burnley’s turnaround at Watford...
Post a Comment
Read more

Bins ‘overflowing’ in parts of England as Covid hits collections

Staff sickness in areas including London, Gloucestershire and Somerset leads to waste services being scaled back Coronavirus – latest updates See all our coronavirus coverage Bins across parts of England are reportedly “overflowing” with rubbish from the festive period due to Covid-related staff shortages. London, Gloucestershire, Somerset and Buckinghamshire are among the areas where councillors have warned that bin collections are being scaled back because of staff sickness. Continue reading... from The Guardian https://ift.tt/3qIHK0C
Post a Comment
Read more