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Imprint: Penguin
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Published: 07/04/2022
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ISBN: 9781529156201
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Length: 336 Pages
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Dimensions: 198mm x 20mm x 129mm
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Weight: 234g
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RRP: £8.99
SHORTLISTED FOR THE COSTA FIRST NOVEL AWARD AND LONGLISTED FOR THE DESMOND ELLIOTT PRIZE
FROM THE AUTHOR OF THE BOY WITH THE TOPKNOT AND EMPIRELAND
'Enormously enjoyable' SUNDAY TIMES
'A satirical masterpiece' TELEGRAPH
'Sanghera's tender and funny book is a cracking and pacy read' OBSERVER
'A stunning novel . . . touching and funny and feels so fresh . . . it just leaps off the page. I adored it' DEBORAH MOGGACH
'Impressive' GUARDIAN
'Entertaining' INDEPENDENT
When Arjan returns to the Black Country after his father's death, his family's corner shop represents everything he tried to leave behind. But his mother insists on keeping the business open, and Arjun finds himself being dragged back from London, and forced into big decisions about his own relationship. Yet Arjan's story isn't the first and it won't be the last: Surinder and Kamaljit, two sisters, a generation back in the family, also experienced their own share of betrayals and loyalties, loves and regrets.
Praise for Empireland
'A fascinating reckoning with a history of empire' GUARDIAN
'I only wish this book had been around when I was at school' SADIQ KHAN
'Balanced and insightful' THE TIMES
'This immensely readable book is very timely' FINANCIAL TIMES
'An important book' NEW STATESMAN
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Imprint: Penguin
-
Published: 07/04/2022
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ISBN: 9781529156201
-
Length: 336 Pages
-
Dimensions: 198mm x 20mm x 129mm
-
Weight: 234g
-
RRP: £8.99
Reviews
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Enormously enjoyable…Marriage Material isn’t simply an ingenious exercise in updating…Sanghera’s central subject, as in his much-praised memoir, The Boy with the Topknot, is prejudice…One of the novel’s achievements is to keep you in mind of all this while maintaining a tone of shrewdly humorous tolerance. Sanghera’s forte is wry comedy tinged with pathos…There is a concluding twist that has all the poisonous horror of finding a cobra coiled around boxes of confectionary in a corner shop…[A] warm, keenly observant and immensely appealing novel.
Sunday Times
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A satirical masterpiece … A razor-sharp disquisition on the trials of being an Asian newsagent…Handled with a poignancy that makes it hurt to read. But those tears are soon replaced by ones of laughter … As past and present collide in a violent, twisty finale, it is clear that the caste system of the old country is alive and dangerous. Sanghera is such an engaging and versatile writer that the pages fly by in a flurry of pathos, politics and paratha with extra butter. Not many readers will recognise this satirical mini-masterpiece as a reworking of the 1908 Arnold Bennett novel The Old Wives’ Tale, but everyone will feel richer for its uncompromising take on race relations in the Black Country.
Sunday Telegraph
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His poignant memoir of growing up in 1980s Wolverhampton won Sathnam Sanghera an army of admirers as well as a clutch of nominations and awards. Five years on, he has turned his literary talents in the direction of fiction, with this funny and insightful first novel the result … A thoughtful examination of the complexities of modern Britain … An engrossing, entertaining and rewarding read.
Daily Mail
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Smart, funny and melancholic, Sanghera's debut novel goes straight to the heart of family life
Marie Claire
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A novel that ingeniously ‘shoplifts’ (his word) characters and elements of plot from Arnold Bennett’s The Old Wives’ Tale…This dangerous material is handled with a darkly comic lightness of touch, and an impassively detached ironic tone that may owe something to Bennett — like Bennett, Sanghera makes good use of local newspaper cuttings, letters to the editor, and contemporary fashion magazine material, which gives an unobtrusively authentic period flavour to each passing phase. This book is so well researched you hardly notice the work that’s gone into it…The mix of comedy, satire, realism and optimism is nicely judged.
Spectator
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Subtle and often very funny prose … What lifts this novel far above cliché is Sanghera’s deft sense of irony and self-awareness regarding his subject matter … The family’s unfolding history is beautifully counterpointed by real-life events in the local political landscape … Sanghera’s tender and funny book is a cracking and pacy read.
Observer
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Sathnam Sanghera’s entertaining story is a “remix” of Arnold Bennett’s classic novel The Old Wives’ Tale … Playful wit infuses the novel … But behind the humour and the plot twists, is an important novel that explores an often overlooked part of this country's history … That the story of the Victorian mercantile class told in Bennett’s novel is so easily transposed onto the community Sanghera grew up in nearly a century later is absolutely fascinating, and by recognizing and exploiting this with excellent effect, he examines the nationwide story of British immigration through the prism of the Punjabi Sikh experience.
Independent
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A funny and touching read ... Brilliant … A superbly updated version of Arnold Bennett’s The Old Wives’ Tale. At its heart, this is a simple story of family … yet, all this is handled throughout with the lightest of touches, so that on reaching the end, you want to begin again to pick up the subtle nuances of this book
Psychologies
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It is very good and has many of the qualities found in Bennett’s masterpiece: acute observation of society and societal change, thoroughly imagined and well depicted characters, mastery of naturalistic detail, and generosity of tone. It is very enjoyable … It does what the novel can still do better than any other art-form: showing you that other people think and act in a manner very different from your own, but one which is equally valid … It is [a novel] which celebrates that most necessary of qualities, kindness … It is acute about human frailty, but also understanding of this. It is often funny and its great merit is its humanity. It’s worthy homage to Arnold Bennett.
Scotsman
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It will take virtually no pages for you to be hooked
Harper's Bazaar - 5 Books for the Autumn
