Brotherless Night opens with 16-year-old Sashi Kulenthiren, who hopes to be a doctor like her eldest brother, making tea when the kettle slips out of her hand, causing her to pour boiling water on herself. When a neighbour, K, hears her screams, he rushes over to help, cracking raw eggs over the scalds to soothe the pain. “So I began as K’s patient though he ended as mine,” Sashi reflects.

Set in 1980s Sri Lanka, VV Ganeshananthan’s coming-of-age novel – which won the 2024 Women’s prize for fiction – is an epic and hard-hitting tale of family and survival as it documents life during the civil war between Tamil separatists and the Sinhalese majority that lasted three decades. Before fighting breaks out, Sashi’s most pressing problem is whether she will pass her exams at school. But soon violence and kidnapping become the norm, communities are left “brotherless” and ordinary citizens are turned into what the outside world calls terrorists.

Sashi, who becomes a trainee doctor, begins working as a field hospital medic, and finds her loyalties put to the test. She must also reckon with her feelings for K, who has filled her thoughts ever since he came to her aid in her teens, and who becomes a high-ranking Tamil Tiger official.

Nirmala Rajasingam is the narrator, her mellifluous reading drawing out the subtle intimacy and compassion in Ganeshananthan’s prose. Contemplating her love for K, Sashi reflects: “I wanted the life on the other side of the war’s looking-glass, the future we might have had, and which no longer existed.”

Available via Penguin Audio, 13hr 28min

Further listening

Old God’s Time
Sebastian Barry, Faber, 8hr 34min
Stephen Hogan narrates this Booker prize-longlisted tale of a retired policeman whose solitude is interrupted by two ex-colleagues looking for assistance on a case.

We All Shine On: John, Yoko & Me
Elliot Mintz, Penguin Audio, 9hr 9min
Mintz, the one-time radio host and publicist to the stars, documents his close friendship with John Lennon and Yoko Ono. Read by the author.