'Gripping... irresistible... brilliant' The Times

'Perfectly judged and intimately alive' Guardian

Nayan Olak hasn't risked love since his young son died.

Instead he has ploughed his grief and energy into his work at the union, trying to create the world he would have wanted for his boy. Now he's running for the leadership: a huge moment for Nayan, the culmination of everything he believes.

As he grows closer to the mysterious Helen Fletcher, and to the possibility that their pasts may have been connected, much more is suddenly threatened than his chances of winning. And when Megha Sharma, a new candidate with new politics, bursts into the picture, the race of a lifetime is on.

'A plot-packed, propulsive story' New York Times

'Restless, inquiring, utterly topical. The Spoiled Heart may be his finest yet, with a tumultuous but perfectly sustained ending that proves both moving and revelatory' Financial Times

Readers are obsessed with The Spoiled Heart:

**'A deft and artful novel when it comes to speaking around the philosophical questions that define our current 'culture wars''

**'A compelling story that looks at a number of social and cultural issues but is basically a very absorbing narrative'

**'A masterful novel which asks important topical state-of-the-nation questions'

**'My favourite of Sahota's novels'

About the Author
Sunjeev Sahota is the highly acclaimed author of Ours Are the Streets, The Year of the Runaways and China Room. The Year of the Runaways was shortlisted for the 2015 Booker Prize and the International Dylan Thomas Prize, and won the Encore Prize, the South Bank Sky Arts Award, and the European Union Prize for Literature. China Room was shortlisted for the Rathbones Folio Prize and longlisted for the 2021 Booker Prize, the RSL Ondaatje Prize and the Walter Scott Prize for Historical Fiction. Sahota was chosen as one of the Granta Best of Young British Novelists 2013 and is a fellow of the RSL. He lives in Sheffield and teaches at Durham University. The Spoiled Heart is his fourth novel.

Reviews
An enormously sensitive novelist who works assiduously to shed light on life as it is lived, his characters always tangibly real, and fully three-dimensional. The Spoiled Heart balances its various narratives with subtle skill and a page-turning tension. Engrossing * i *
Reads like several books in one... The pages fly. If it doesn't get Sahota on the Booker longlist again, I'll be very disappointed * The Times *
Perfectly paced...[and] gripping... Sahota builds a forceful portrait of collective moral failure and responsibility... The Spoiled Heart feels genuinely, uncomfortably contemporary - a novel at once unafraid of judgment and admirably concerned about its consequences * Guardian *
Sahota has a surgeon's dexterous hands, and the reader senses his confidence . . . a plot-packed, propulsive story . . . There is an easeful precision to Sahota's prose reminiscent of Kamila Shamsie and Jhumpa Lahiri, a painful irony that evokes Percival Everett, and a grand human downfall alongside a battle of ideas that is Ibsenesque * New York Times *
A smart and sophisticatedly written novel * Daily Telegraph *



Book Information
ISBN 9781787304086
Author Sunjeev Sahota
Format Paperback
Page Count 336
Imprint Harvill Secker
Publisher Vintage Publishing
Weight(grams) 336g
Dimensions(mm) 216mm * 135mm * 24mm