Love Marriage Available Now!
Love Marriage is available in bookstores and at these online retailers: Amazon - Barnes & Noble - Borders - Powell's
For a full list of book tour dates and cities, see the News page.
Praise for Love Marriage
"Ganeshananthan has created a slow-burning and beautifully written debut in Love Marriage. It is an evocative examination of Sri Lankan cultural mores, and the way one family is affected by love and war."
—The Financial Times
"Innovative….this is an ambitious family drama about an underreported part of the world, filled with well-shaded characters [and] gorgeous flourish…Buy it."
—New York Magazine
"…at its best and simplest, Ganeshananthan can be profoundly moving. She captures the pain of exile poignantly."
—The San Francisco Chronicle
In this globe-scattered Sri Lankan family, we speak only of two kinds of marriage. The first is the Arranged Marriage. The second is the Love Marriage. In reality, there is a whole spectrum in between, but most of us spend years running away from the first towards the second. [p. 3]
Yalini, the daughter of Sri Lankan immigrants who left their collapsing country and married in America, finds herself caught between the history of her ancestors and her own modern world. But when she is summoned to Toronto to help care for her dying uncle, Kumaran, a former member of the militant Tamil Tigers, she is forced to see that violence is not a relic of the Sri Lankan past, but very much a part of her Western present.
While Kumaran's loved ones gather around him to say goodbye, Yalini traces her family's roots—and the conflicts facing them as ethnic Tamils—through a series of marriages. Now, as Kumaran's death and his daughter's politically motivated nuptials edge closer, in the tradition of her family, Yalini too must decide where she stands.
Lyrical and innovative, V. V. Ganeshananthan's novel brilliantly unfolds how a new generation of war both forms and fractures families.
More Praise
"As if she were stringing a necklace of bright beads, the author relates the stories of Yalini's Sri Lankan forebears in lapidary folkloric narratives…What she does here, she does quite affectingly."
—The Boston Globe
"In spare, lyrical prose, V.V. Ganeshananthan's debut novel tells the story of two Sri Lankan Tamil families over four generations who, despite civil war and displacement, are irrevocably joined by marriage and tradition….Powerful."
—Ms. Magazine
"Poignant and authentic…. Insight gained into Toronto's Tamil community is a welcome bonus in this gem of a book by a young writer who is sure to present more thought-provoking, entertaining prose in the future."
—The Toronto Star
"The book is at times witty and always beautifully written."
—The Irish Times
"Ganeshananthan focuses on the journey of one family, in the process painting a broader truth."
—The Independent
"A complex, moving evocation of love and war — two ideas which overlap more often, and more dramatically, than we often care to recognize. Love Marriage is an impressive debut."
—Daniel Alarcon, PEN/Hemingway finalist for War by Candlelight, author of Lost City Radio, one of Granta’s Best Young American Novelists
"In her clear-eyed first novel, V.V. Ganeshananthan has given us a riveting picture of a Sri Lanka at odds with itself, both at home and abroad, and of the intersections of love and war that shape us all. A debut of incredible passion and wisdom."
—Rebecca Johns, PEN/Hemingway finalist for Icebergs
"Love Marriage is a beautiful first novel that explores the secrets of a country's history and a family's past. With tenderness and wisdom, V.V. Ganeshananthan presents a world both mysterious and familiar to readers. This intricately woven tale, with its universal themes of love and estrangement, presents an exciting new voice in American literature."
—Yiyun Li, one of Granta's Best Young American Novelists and author of A Thousand Years of Good Prayers, winner of the Frank O’Connor International Short Story Award, the PEN/Hemingway Award, and the Guardian First Book Award
Published internationally by Garzanti (Italy), JC Lattes (France), Weidenfeld & Nicholson (the U.K. and associated territories), Rao (Romania), Random House (Germany), Hachette (India), and Stylos (Serbia).
Read an excerpt, or more about Love Marriage.