Description
The author of the multi-prize-winning The Year of the Runaways returns with a novel of forbidden love that echoes across the generations
'China Room is the kind of novel that reminds you why you fell in love with reading' Open Book, BBC Radio 4
Shortlisted for the Rathbones Folio Prize 2022
Longlisted for the Booker Prize 2021
Longlisted for the Walter Scott Prize for Historical Fiction 2022
Longlist for the Ondaatje Prize 2022
A Daily Telegraph , Guardian and The Times Book of the Year
Mehar, a young bride in rural 1929 Punjab, is trying to discover the identity of her new husband. She and her sisters-in-law, married to three brothers in a single ceremony, spend their days at work in the family's 'china room', sequestered from contact with the men. When Mehar develops a theory as to which of them is hers, a passion is ignited that will put more than one life at risk.
Spiralling around Mehar's story is that of a young man who in 1999 travels from England to the now-deserted farm, its 'china room' locked and barred. In enforced flight from the traumas of his adolescence - his experiences of addiction, racism, and estrangement from the culture of his birth - he spends a summer in contemplation and recovery, finally gathering the strength to return home.
Readers love CHINA ROOM:
***** Amazing... I could not put it down!
***** The characters jump off the pages... Beautiful
***** Powerful and heart-wrenching
***** Wonderful... I read it in one sitting
***** Gripping storytelling... An easy five stars
About the Author
Sunjeev Sahota is the author of Ours Are the Streets and The Year of the Runaways, which was shortlisted for the 2015 Man Booker Prize, the International Dylan Thomas Prize and the Sunday Times Young Writer of the Year Award, and won the Encore Prize, the European Union Prize for Literature, and the South Bank Sky Arts Award. He was chosen as one of Granta's Best Young British Novelists in 2013. He lives in Sheffield.
Reviews
Sunjeev Sahota's writing is the stuff of miracles. Emotional and heartrending, China Room juggles questions of love, debt, and what it means to build a home alongside the history that carries us. China Room is a propulsive dream, intricately wrought, and Sahota is a maestro. -- Bryan Washington, author of LOT and MEMORIAL
China Room is a rare novel that makes you pause in its beauty. -- Francesca Carington * Sunday Telegraph, *Novel of the Week* *
Sahota is a truly original novelist, his prose sparingly precise in its beauty, steeped in kindness and deep humanity. -- Ruth Scurr * TLS *
With poise, restraint and deep intelligence, Sahota feeds us big, difficult themes - segregation and freedom, revolution and empire - in a form that is unsweetened, fresh and nourishing. Surely this, his third novel, will propel him up the shortlists to the prizewinning status he deserves. -- Melissa Katsoulis * The Times, 'This Book Will Win Prizes' *
An extraordinarily gifted writer... Sahota's ability to shine a phrase is not bought for the usual steep formalist price, at the expense of simplicity, intimate feeling, and solid representation. He's both camera and painter, in a literary world that often separates those novelistic tasks. -- James Wood * New Yorker *
Sahota combines great writing with amazing storytelling... his books are intelligent and beautifully written and very poised but also incredibly immersive, gripping and very moving. An epic in miniature, China Room is the kind of novel that reminds you why you fell in love with reading in the first place. -- Open Book * BBC Radio 4 *
Novels this good are rare. -- Anthony Cummins * Daily Mail, *Summer Reads of 2021* *
Sahota's prose is a finely modulated instrument that moves from subtle minutiae to cosmic magnitude... Exhibiting the narrative control and psychological acuity of Rohinton Mistry and Jhumpa Lahiri, Sahota's tale of trans-generational trauma is quietly devastating. -- Madeleine Feeny * Spectator *
Sahota's beautifully crafted novel dovetails two stories from different eras... Both characters are prisoners of circumstances but, in their hunger for redemption, become emblematic of the human condition. -- Max Davidson * Mail on Sunday *
Such a thrilling combination of beauty and heartbreak. It's breathtaking.
Sahota gives his period narrative the same effortless immediacy as his present-day one, yet his novel works by stealth, quietly beguiling the reader into an almost painful intimacy... I loved it. -- Claire Allfree * Daily Mail *
There is a scrupulous subtlety about that way that Sahota refuses to let his historical characters act as though they are in a historical novel. -- Alex Clark * Guardian, Book of the Day *
An intense drama of classic themes - love, family, survival, and betrayal - told with passion and precision in Sahota's economical, lyrical prose. -- Adam Foulds, author of THE QUICKENING MAZE
A gripping read... a memorable and poignant depiction of how family histories can echo through the generations. -- Huston Gilmore * Daily Mirror *
Outstanding... dense with intricate layers. As author, Sahota brilliantly plays with access to knowledge, to history. China Room promises to haunt and to illuminate. * Shelf Awareness *
China Room is very good at examining the trauma held in one family, whether it be personal or housed in a home, village, or country. Sahota seems to acknowledge that although we are not doomed to repeat the past, each subsequent generation feels a measure of the hardship that the last generation faced... a well-developed story of two lives that touch one another in ways that that can never be clearly seen. -- India Lewis * Arts Desk *
Engrossing, intricate, excellent. * Literary Review *
Sunjeev Sahota's The Year of the Runaways propelled him on to the 2015 Booker shortlist. His latest, China Room, a multi-generational masterpiece ... could well see him nominated again. -- Stephanie Cross * Daily Mail *
Political currents seep subtly in and the cumulative effect is potent -- Max Liu * i *
Exquisitely written -- Sameer Rahim * Daily Telegraph, *Books of the Year* *
Sunjeev Sahota balances weighty ideas about cultural prisons and self-determination with hushed, featherweight prose -- Claire Allfree * The Times, *Books of the Year* *
[A] hauntingly beautiful novel -- Jane Shilling * Daily Mail *
Sahota's third novel has prose so beautiful it stops you dead * Daily Telegraph *
Sunjeev Sahota's writing is the stuff of miracles. Emotional and heartrending, China Room juggles questions of love, debt, and what it means to build a home alongside the history that carries us. China Room is a propulsive dream, intricately wrought, and Sahota is a maestro. * Bryan Washington, author of LOT and MEMORIAL *
Sunjeev Sahota's The Year of the Runaways propelled him on to the 2015 Booker shortlist. His latest, China Room, a multi-generational masterpiece ... could well see him nominated again -- Stephanie Cross * Daily Mail, *Books to Look Out For 2021* *
Book Information
ISBN 9781911215851
Author Sunjeev Sahota
Format Hardback
Page Count 256
Imprint Harvill Secker
Publisher Vintage Publishing
Weight(grams) 377g
Dimensions(mm) 222mm * 144mm * 26mm
