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Imprint: Harvill Secker
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Published: 06/05/2021
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ISBN: 9781911215851
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Length: 256 Pages
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Dimensions: 225mm x 27mm x 145mm
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Weight: 419g
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RRP: £16.99
Read the heart-stopping new novel from the Booker-shortlisted author of The Year of the Runaways
'Sunjeev Sahota's writing is the stuff of miracles' Bryan Washington
'A gorgeous, gripping read' Kamila Shamsie
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 hard 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 painful contemplation and recovery, finally gathering the strength to return home.
'I'm blown away by it. I was gripped from the first page to the last' Tessa Hadley
'Such a thrilling combination of beauty and heartbreak. It's breathtaking' Charlotte Mendelson
'An intense drama of classic themes - love, family, survival, and betrayal - told with passion and precision in Sahota's economical, lyrical prose' Adam Foulds
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Imprint: Harvill Secker
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Published: 06/05/2021
-
ISBN: 9781911215851
-
Length: 256 Pages
-
Dimensions: 225mm x 27mm x 145mm
-
Weight: 419g
-
RRP: £16.99
Reviews
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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'
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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
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China Room is the most personal of Sahota's novels so far, a beautifully realised blend of fiction and memoir... Sahota is a truly original novelist, his prose sparingly precise in its beauty, steeped in kindness and deep humanity.
Ruth Scurr, TLS
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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
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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... Sahota has demonstrated an ambitious need to adapt the specific and concrete to something less easy to pin down, complete with all the gaps and ruptures that life provides and art makes, even for a moment, tangible.
Alex Clark, Guardian, Book of the Day
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Engrossing, intricate yet compact... excellent.
Anthony Cummins, Literary Review
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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
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Poised and poignant, China Room is a rare novel that makes you pause in its beauty
Francesca Carington, Sunday Telegraph, *Novel of the Week*
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A gripping read... a memorable and poignant depiction of how family histories can echo through the generations
Huston Gilmore, Daily Mirror
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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
