Eliana Ramage is the author of To the Moon and Back, a Reese’s Book Club pick. She holds an MFA in fiction from the Iowa Writers’ Workshop, and has received support from Lambda Literary, Vermont Studio Center, Tin House, and the Kimmel Harding Nelson Center. A citizen of the Cherokee Nation, she lives in Nashville with her family.
At Lit Hub Ramage tagged eight "truly beautiful, inventive, and powerful novels and memoirs about ambitious women—singular in desire but breathtakingly expansive in reach." One title on the list:
V.V. Ganeshananthan, Brotherless NightRead about another title on Ramage's list.
I have been shouting about this novel from the rooftops since it came out two and a half years ago, and I’m nowhere near done. Set in the 1980s during Sri Lanka’scivil war, 16-year-old Sashi dreams of becoming a doctor. But as the war tears at civilian life, Sashi’s four brothers and their friend K are pulled into the conflict. Now Sashi’s desire to get through medical school must maneuver itself alongside her other needs: to be safe, to keep her loved ones safe, and to try to see the end of it without doing harm.
One of many questions raised by this story: who “gets to” protect their own ambition? Another question: what obligations come with our abilities? In one scene, Sashi is asked to volunteer at a field hospital for the militant Tamil Tigers. In another, her medical school professor invites her to join a dangerous project, risking her life in pursuit of documenting all human rights violations, from all sources.
Brotherless Night is among Daphne Fama's seven novels set during times of great political upheaval and Asha Thanki's seven novels about families surviving political unrest.
--Marshal Zeringue
Posts
