China Room

In 1929 young bride Mehar struggles with her family&rsquo;s expectations whilst seventy years later her great-grandson discovers what her story can teach him about his own path. 
 
'A gorgeous, gripping read' Kamila Shamsie 
'A multi-generational masterpiece' Daily Mail 
 
Mehar, a young bride in rural Punjab, is trying to discover the identity of her new husband. It is 1929, and she and her sisters-in-law - married to three brothers in a single ceremony - spend their days hard at work on the family farm, 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 flees from England to the deserted sun-scorched farm. Can a summer spent learning of love and of his family's past give him the strength for the journey home? 
 
Readers love China Room 
***** 'I didn't want it to end' 
***** 'What. A. Book.' 
***** 'Beautifully crafted...a story as old as time' 
***** 'A novel of thwarted loves' 
 
Shortlisted for the 2022 Rathbones Folio Prize 
Longlisted for the 2021 Booker Prize 
 
'Amazing storytelling...gripping and very moving' BBC Radio 4, Open Book 
 
'I'm blown away by it' Tessa Hadley 
 
'Moving...fresh and nourishing' The Times

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.

Sahota is a truly original novelist, his prose sparingly precise in its beauty, steeped in kindness and deep humanity.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

Such a thrilling combination of beauty and heartbreak. It's breathtaking.

Charlotte Mendelson, author of ALMOST ENGLISH

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.

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.

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.

Outstanding... dense with intricate layers. As author, Sahota brilliantly plays with access to knowledge, to history. China Room promises to haunt and to illuminate.

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.

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.

Political currents seep subtly in and the cumulative effect is potent

Sunjeev Sahota balances weighty ideas about cultural prisons and self-determination with hushed, featherweight prose

Sahota's third novel has prose so beautiful it stops you dead

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.

Sunjeev Sahota

One of Britain’s finest writers...page-turning drama

A smart and sophisticatedly written novel

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

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

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

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

Incisive and poignant, his [Sahota’s] fourth novel cuts to the merciless core of the culture wars, engaging with issues of loyalty, identity, inequality and community, and tracing the unforeseen consequences of actions that ripple through the years

The Spoiled Heart finds a timeless imprint in the hot metal of the moment… a tragedy like Fitzgerald’s The Great Gatsby that has taken root in the mind of a haunted onlooker. How much can really ever be known or should be? That’s the paradox this brilliant novel wrestles with and one that will consume any reader who picks it up

The Spoiled Heart is not just cleverly structured…but executed with rare literary intelligence

What lifts this tightly patterned novel…is Sahota’s remarkable skill in characterisation. Every person…feels intimately alive.... His characters don’t just appear, they emerge and grow, revealing of themselves a little more in every finely judged interaction

In one night, Nayan lost everything. Years later, his world is at risk again. 
 
Nayan has fought hard to move on, losing himself in his political work, trying to make a better world. A fresh challenge arrives with newcomer Megha, who threatens not just his career ambitions, but his ideals. 
 
Meanwhile the enigmatic Helen Fletcher returns to Chesterfield and Nayan finds himself growing close to her. But Helen carries secrets which connect her to Nayan in ways he doesn’t realise. 
 
The Spoiled Heart is an explosive story of how a few words or a single action – to one person careless, to another, charged – can trigger a cascade of unimaginable consequences. 
 
’One of Britain’s finest writers…page-turning’ Observer 
 
‘Withheld revelations and dark secrets...plot-packed, propulsive’ New York Times 
 
‘Gripping...irresistible...brilliant’ The Times 
 
'Utterly compelling, original and very moving' Tessa Hadley 
 
‘Moving and revelatory’ Financial Times 
 
‘Smart and sophisticatedly written’ Daily Telegraph 
 
‘Perfectly paced…gripping’ Guardian

Sunjeev Sahota

Praise for The Spoiled Heart

One of Britain’s finest writers...page-turning drama

A smart and sophisticatedly written novel

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 vari ...

One of Britain’s finest writers...page-turning drama

A smart and sophisticatedly written novel

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 vari ...

One of Britain’s finest writers...page-turning drama

A smart and sophisticatedly written novel

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 vari ...

Books by Sunjeev Sahota

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