Sunjeev Sahota

Longlisted for the Booker Prize 2021, a thrilling and heartbreaking story of love, family, survival and betrayal. 'A gorgeous, gripping read' Kamila Shamsie 'I'm blown away by it' Tessa Hadley 'The stuff of miracles' Bryan Washington 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 travels from England to the deserted sun-scorched farm. In flight from the traumas of his adolescence, he spends the summer in painful recovery, gathering strength for the journey home. 'Amazing storytelling...gripping and very moving' BBC Radio 4, Open Book 'A rare novel that makes you pause in its beauty' Sunday Telegraph 'Engrossing, intricate...devastating' Literary Review

Longlisted for the Booker Prize 2021

China Room

ame 

Later, she'll wonder if that is the essence of being a man in the world, not simply desiring a thing, but being able to voice that desire out loud.

I felt a sharp longing for her, and beside that longing, faith that life need not remain a wail of anger, that it can also be full of beautiful moments that just seem to arrive with the birds.

And I realised that this was what I liked, not being on my own, far from it, I wanted people around me I just didnt want to talk. I wanted undemanding friendships, transcendent connections, all and forever on my own terms. 

'It's different for women, isn't it? They have no choice in where they go. They grow up in a prison and then get married into one'

You know what the best thing is about falling out of love? It sets you free. Because when you're in love it is everything, it is imprisoning, it is all there is, and youd do anything, anything, to keep that love. But when it withers you can suddenly see the rest of the world again, everything else floods back into the places that love had monopolised.

China Room quotes

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