American novelist V.V. Ganeshananthan has won the second annual Carol Shields Prize for Fiction.

The $150,000 (U.S.) prize, named after the American-born and Canadian-based author Carol Shields, acknowledges, celebrates, and promotes the best works of fiction written by women and non-binary writers in Canada and the United States.

Ganeshananthan won the 2024 prize for Brotherless Night (Random House), her second novel, which is set during the early years of Sri Lanka’s civil war. She was named the winner at an event in Toronto on May 8. The other finalists for the prize – Eleanor Catton (Birnam Wood), Claudia Dey (Daughter), Kim Coleman Foote (Coleman Hill), and Janika Oza (A History of Burning) – each receive $12,500 (U.S.).

Selections for this year’s prize, including the winner, shortlist, and longlist, were made by a jury comprised of chair Jen Sookfong Lee, Laila Lalami, Claire Messud, Dolen Perkins-Valdez, and Eden Robinson. In their citation, the jury called Brotherless Night “an ambitious and beautifully written novel” that “asks us to consider how history is told, whom it serves, and the many truths it leaves out.”

In addition to the prize money, Ganeshananthan also receives a residency at the Fogo Island Inn on Fogo Island off the northeast coast of Newfoundland.