The writer V. V. Ganeshananthan has won this year's Carol Shields Prize for Fiction, for her novel Brotherless Night. This is the second year of the prize, which awards English-language writing by women and nonbinary authors. Winners of the award receive $150,000.
Brotherless Night centers on a young woman named Sashi, in 1981, who wants to become a doctor. But her dreams get upended as her family gets swept up in the conflict between the Sri Lankan government and the minority insurgent group known as the Tamil Tigers. "I was interested in writing about the gray space between militarized societies and questions of choice and coercion," Ganeshananthan told WBUR's Here & Now in a 2023 interview.
