Slaughterhouse Heart

A stunning story of a father and son's lifetime of secrets, lies and heartbreaks - a startlingly original debut from a new and exhilarating literary talent.

This will have you tied to the sofa all weekend

An extraordinary and moving story that intuitively exposes the emotions men hate having to face

Afsaneh Knight's debut novel packs a steady and unrelenting series of punches... It's a book about love, but not sentimentality... all the better for its lack of easy answers

Afsaneh Knight handles a shifting narrative with dexterity...deft and promising

An interesting debut by a promising young writer

I was gripped from the beginning....sharp and astringent with great emotion

Knight writes with grace and empathic imagination, delivering drama with a clenched fist. A gripping literary debut.

Afsaneh Knight was born in December 1978. She lives in London with her husband and two children. This is her first novel.

What makes a father violent? It takes a brave man to find out . . . 
 
As a volunteer at St Margaret's Hospice, eager and helpful Meryl is looking for a role in life. The arrival of Jamie, the son of a patient, may be just what she is after. He is good-looking, young and, above all, troubled. 
 
Jamie's father has only a few days to live, but between father and son is a lifetime of misunderstanding and unhappiness. Could the most powerful legacy Jamie faces be an inability to love? With well-meaning Meryl hovering in the background, Jamie embarks on his long dark night of the soul, facing the secrets, lies and heartbreaks behind his father's life. 
 
Meanwhile his dying father, seemingly unconscious to it all, relives his extraordinary history, from the triumphs of his life as a boxer, to the onset of a crippling illness he doesn't understand. And in the quiet of the night, he receives strange visitors of his own....

Afsaneh Knight

Witty, warm and observant enough to shine light into the darkest corners; a mesmerising read

Knight expertly captures that particular guilt and self-loathing that amplifies the internal misery of the outwardly successful. Her best creation is mediocre lawyer JP, a man who rages impotently at life by leaving abusive comments beneath online articles. Everyone in this world struggles to connect despite always being connected, the “men tippetty-tapping with thumbs, texting their life stories all about town, average as sandwiches, boring as soup.”

Working with shifting points of view to bring her portrait of collective disaffection and internal dissonance into sharp focus, Knight keeps a disciplined hold on her material... the uncompromising honesty is impressive. So, too, is her skill in eliciting sympathy for even the most unlikely character

The characters are like ants under a magnifying glass, and Knight masterfully creates a suffocating atmosphere... a brave and poignant indictment of 21st-century living.

THE SUNSHINE YEARS is a brilliant story by one of Britain's best young writers. It is a passionate, stylish novel that tells the big new truths about relationships, and is one of those books that shimmers with ideas and observations. Afsaneh Knight is a star

Afsaneh Knight handles it with real aplomb, treating everybody concerned with a sympathy that never curdles into indulgence, and making their ... dilemmas feel genuinely urgent.

Beautifully acute... It engage[s] thoughtfully, and surprisingly, with our struggle to find fulfilment in a strange world'

It's a mark of Knight's talent that JP can be so contradictory, but never unconvincing. By the time the novel has wound down to a bittersweet and pleasingly enigmatic ending, you'll even miss the guy, and all his friends. Which shows just how well Knight has done her job

Knight's second novel is a bleak and brilliant book, a disturbing anatomy of the privileged but unexamined life

A bleak portrayal of Sydney-sider thirty-something digressives and nihilists. I liked its refreshing inconclusiveness and its sparse dialogue-driven dramatic arc, and its evocations of physicality

Massive and freewheeling as well as tight, acutely observed, moving and very funny ... deeply satisfying

Hot Things to Do Now - funny, squirm-inducing

Do you ever wonder where your life is going? 
You are not alone. 
 
Story (that’s his name) can feel a middle-youth crisis coming on. He’s got a great job, a great flat and great mates: 
Mac, who is obsessed with biscuits; 
JP, who never says anything if it’s nice; 
Cannie, whose only admirer is the bird that lives outside her window; 
and 
Vincent, who has finally proposed to his girlfriend after nineteen years. 
 
But alongside the drinks and the kicks, what has any of them actually done? And why is time passing like sand in a sieve? 
 
Is it possible to turn life around? Life is just life, right? And change is a gasping and slippery fish. . .

Afsaneh Knight

Praise for The Sunshine Years

Witty, warm and observant enough to shine light into the darkest corners; a mesmerising read

Knight expertly captures that particular guilt and self-loathing that amplifies the internal misery of the outwardly successful. Her best creation is mediocre lawyer JP, a man who rages impotently at life by leaving ...

Working with shifting points of view to bring her portrait of collective disaffection and internal dissonance into sharp focus, Knight keeps a disciplined hold on her material... the uncompromising honesty is impres ...

Witty, warm and observant enough to shine light into the darkest corners; a mesmerising read

Knight expertly captures that particular guilt and self-loathing that amplifies the internal misery of the outwardly successful. Her best creation is mediocre lawyer JP, a man who rages impotently at life by leaving ...

Working with shifting points of view to bring her portrait of collective disaffection and internal dissonance into sharp focus, Knight keeps a disciplined hold on her material... the uncompromising honesty is impres ...

Witty, warm and observant enough to shine light into the darkest corners; a mesmerising read

Knight expertly captures that particular guilt and self-loathing that amplifies the internal misery of the outwardly successful. Her best creation is mediocre lawyer JP, a man who rages impotently at life by leaving ...

Working with shifting points of view to bring her portrait of collective disaffection and internal dissonance into sharp focus, Knight keeps a disciplined hold on her material... the uncompromising honesty is impres ...

Books by Afsaneh Knight

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