China Room
Sunjeev Sahota
(Author)
Description
LONGLISTED FOR THE 2021 BOOKER PRIZEFINALIST FOR THE AMERICAN LIBRARY ASSOCIATION'S CARNEGIE MEDAL
NAMED A BEST BOOK OF 2021 BY NPR, TIME, AND THE STAR-TRIBUNE "Sunjeev Sahota's new novel follows characters across generations and continents...Heart-wrenching." --Entertainment Weekly "An intimate page-turner with a deeper resonance as a tale of oppression, independence and resilience." --San Francisco Chronicle A transfixing, powerfully imaged (USA Today) novel about two unforgettable characters seeking to free themselves--one from the expectations of women in early twentieth-century Punjab, and the other from the weight of life in the contemporary Indian diaspora Mehar, a young bride in rural 1929 Punjab, is trying to discover the identity of her new husband. Married to three brothers in a single ceremony, she and her now-sisters spend their days hard at work in the family's "china room," sequestered from contact with the men--except when their domineering mother-in-law, Mai, summons them to a darkened chamber at night. Curious and strong willed, Mehar tries to piece together what Mai doesn't want her to know. From beneath her veil, she studies the sounds of the men's voices, the calluses on their fingers as she serves them tea. Soon she glimpses something that seems to confirm which of the brothers is her husband, and a series of events is set in motion that will put more than one life at risk. As the early stirrings of the Indian independence movement rise around her, Mehar must weigh her own desires against the reality--and danger--of her situation. Spiraling around Mehar's story is that of a young man who arrives at his uncle's house in Punjab in the summer of 1999, hoping to shake an addiction that has held him in its grip for more than two years. Growing up in small-town England as the son of an immigrant shopkeeper, his experiences of racism, violence, and estrangement from the culture of his birth led him to seek a dangerous form of escape. As he rides out his withdrawal at his family's ancestral home--an abandoned farmstead, its china room mysteriously locked and barred--he begins to knit himself back together, gathering strength for the journey home. Partly inspired by award-winning author Sunjeev Sahota's family history, China Room is both a deft exploration of how systems of power circumscribe individual lives and a deeply moving portrait of the unconquerable human capacity to resist them. At once sweeping and intimate, lush and propulsive, it is a stunning achievement from a contemporary master.
Product Details
Price
$27.00
$25.11
Publisher
Viking
Publish Date
July 13, 2021
Pages
256
Dimensions
5.7 X 8.4 X 0.9 inches | 0.8 pounds
Language
English
Type
Hardcover
EAN/UPC
9780593298145
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About the Author
Sunjeev Sahota is the author of three novels: China Room, which was longlisted for the Booker Prize and a finalist for the American Library Association's Carnegie Medal; The Year of the Runaways, which was shortlisted for the Booker Prize and the Dylan Thomas Prize, and was awarded a European Union Prize for Literature; and Ours are the Streets. In 2013, he was named one of Granta's twenty Best of Young British Novelists of the decade. He lives in Sheffield, England, with his family.
Reviews
Named a Best Book of the Summer by TIME, LitHub, BookRiot, and AARP Named a Best Book of July by Entertainment Weekly, Good Morning America, PopSugar, and Apartment Therapy
"The follow-up to his Booker Prize-shortlisted The Runaways, Sunjeev Sahota's new novel follows characters across generations and continents (from Punjab to rural England) and is equally heart-wrenching." --Entertainment Weekly "[Sahota] is a restrained stylist whose details bloom in the imagination . . . [there is] respite, even solace, to be found in [his] precise and exhilarating observation." --Harper's Magazine "A family saga both sweeping and granular . . . [that] examines agency, power and human connection." --TIME "An intimate page-turner with a deeper resonance as a tale of oppression, independence and resilience . . . I almost want a sequel." --San Francisco Chronicle "Gorgeously crafted . . . powerful . . . a sweeping dual portrait." --Star-Tribune "Sahota resists the cliché that love heals all wounds--when wounds are this deep, it cannot. The scope of the novel--from 1929 to 2019--shows how much oppression holds fast. What intergenerational love does provide is a path towards self-knowledge, a catalyst to protect the sacred stories of family, and the desire to impart on the next generation new ideas, new hope, and a new path for moving forward towards freedom. China Room is a deeply captivating and necessary novel." --Ploughshares "In Mehar, Sahota has powerfully imagined a life under extreme constraint . . . Mehar's great-grandson is a reminder that freedom is hard-won, but fear and anxiety can get passed down as heirlooms." --USA Today "[An] epic story about family secrets and the struggle to break free from the people and systems who try to hold others back." --PopSugar "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." --The Guardian
"Intimate and startling." --Electric Literature "An examination of power and gender, China Room will make you reexamine a culture across time." --GoodMorningAmerica.com "China Room is just as beautiful as it is heart-shattering." --Apartment Therapy "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." --The Times (London) "A lovely, dream-like novel . . . 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 with his characters' respective culturally circumscribed lives. I loved it." --The Daily Mail (London) "Beautifully realized. . . Sahota is a truly original novelist, his prose sparingly precise in its beauty, steeped in kindness and deep humanity." --Times Literary Supplement (London) "Engrossing . . . Intricate yet compact . . . the story's deceptively placid style renders its combustible elements all the more devastating . . . [An] excellent novel." --Literary Review (London) "Themes of freedom and imprisonment are knitted through both stories, which, despite the historical setting, are resolutely inward-looking . . . Poised and poignant, China Room is a rare novel that makes you pause in its beauty." --The Telegraph (London) "Sahota's beautifully crafted novel dovetails two stories from different eras... Both characters are prisoners of circumstance but, in their hunger for redemption, become emblematic of the human condition." --Mail on Sunday "[A] heartbreakingly quiet, sensitive, and beautifully written story of what one life means in the present and how it impacts other lives generations into the future." --India Currents "Compelling and devastating . . . Through short chapters and sparse, tightly wrought prose, Sahota's novel is both easy to read and difficult to put down. Something of a hometown hero, not only in the old steel town of Sheffield, where he currently resides, but also to British Indian and Asian writers, Sahota cements his place in a vibrant literary canon alongside Salman Rushdie, Kamila Shamsie, Mohsin Hamid, Hari Kunzru and others." --BookPage "Mesmerizing . . . Simultaneously visceral and breathless, this is one knockout of a novel." --Booklist (STARRED) "Magnificent . . . Sahota brilliantly plays with access to knowledge, to history . . . promises to haunt and illuminate." --Shelf Awareness "China Room burns quietly but fiercely from first page to last--a gorgeous, gripping read." --Kamila Shamsie, author of Home Fire "Boisterous, emotional, and heartrending, China Room juggles questions of love, debt, and what it means to build a home alongside the history that carries us. Sahota navigates the worlds between where we believe we belong, where we end up, and the choices we make to close the distance along the way, with humanity, precision, and grace--China Room is a propulsive dream, intricately wrought, and Sahota is a maestro." --Bryan Washington, author of Memorial "China Room is a stunning novel, I'm blown away by it. It's so complex and yet lucid and easy, so perfectly achieved. I was gripped from the first page to the last." --Tessa Hadley, author of The Past "An intense drama of classic themes--love, family, survival, and betrayal--told with passion and precision in Sahota's economical, lyrical prose. China Room is a brilliant novel. I won't forget any of these characters." --Adam Foulds, author of The Quickening Maze "Such a thrilling combination of beauty and heartbreak. It's breathtaking." --Charlotte Mendelson, author of When We Were Bad "China Room, a multi-generational masterpiece based in part on Sahota's family history, could well see him nominated [for the Booker] again." --The Daily Mail, "Books to Look Out For 2021"
"The follow-up to his Booker Prize-shortlisted The Runaways, Sunjeev Sahota's new novel follows characters across generations and continents (from Punjab to rural England) and is equally heart-wrenching." --Entertainment Weekly "[Sahota] is a restrained stylist whose details bloom in the imagination . . . [there is] respite, even solace, to be found in [his] precise and exhilarating observation." --Harper's Magazine "A family saga both sweeping and granular . . . [that] examines agency, power and human connection." --TIME "An intimate page-turner with a deeper resonance as a tale of oppression, independence and resilience . . . I almost want a sequel." --San Francisco Chronicle "Gorgeously crafted . . . powerful . . . a sweeping dual portrait." --Star-Tribune "Sahota resists the cliché that love heals all wounds--when wounds are this deep, it cannot. The scope of the novel--from 1929 to 2019--shows how much oppression holds fast. What intergenerational love does provide is a path towards self-knowledge, a catalyst to protect the sacred stories of family, and the desire to impart on the next generation new ideas, new hope, and a new path for moving forward towards freedom. China Room is a deeply captivating and necessary novel." --Ploughshares "In Mehar, Sahota has powerfully imagined a life under extreme constraint . . . Mehar's great-grandson is a reminder that freedom is hard-won, but fear and anxiety can get passed down as heirlooms." --USA Today "[An] epic story about family secrets and the struggle to break free from the people and systems who try to hold others back." --PopSugar "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." --The Guardian
"Intimate and startling." --Electric Literature "An examination of power and gender, China Room will make you reexamine a culture across time." --GoodMorningAmerica.com "China Room is just as beautiful as it is heart-shattering." --Apartment Therapy "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." --The Times (London) "A lovely, dream-like novel . . . 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 with his characters' respective culturally circumscribed lives. I loved it." --The Daily Mail (London) "Beautifully realized. . . Sahota is a truly original novelist, his prose sparingly precise in its beauty, steeped in kindness and deep humanity." --Times Literary Supplement (London) "Engrossing . . . Intricate yet compact . . . the story's deceptively placid style renders its combustible elements all the more devastating . . . [An] excellent novel." --Literary Review (London) "Themes of freedom and imprisonment are knitted through both stories, which, despite the historical setting, are resolutely inward-looking . . . Poised and poignant, China Room is a rare novel that makes you pause in its beauty." --The Telegraph (London) "Sahota's beautifully crafted novel dovetails two stories from different eras... Both characters are prisoners of circumstance but, in their hunger for redemption, become emblematic of the human condition." --Mail on Sunday "[A] heartbreakingly quiet, sensitive, and beautifully written story of what one life means in the present and how it impacts other lives generations into the future." --India Currents "Compelling and devastating . . . Through short chapters and sparse, tightly wrought prose, Sahota's novel is both easy to read and difficult to put down. Something of a hometown hero, not only in the old steel town of Sheffield, where he currently resides, but also to British Indian and Asian writers, Sahota cements his place in a vibrant literary canon alongside Salman Rushdie, Kamila Shamsie, Mohsin Hamid, Hari Kunzru and others." --BookPage "Mesmerizing . . . Simultaneously visceral and breathless, this is one knockout of a novel." --Booklist (STARRED) "Magnificent . . . Sahota brilliantly plays with access to knowledge, to history . . . promises to haunt and illuminate." --Shelf Awareness "China Room burns quietly but fiercely from first page to last--a gorgeous, gripping read." --Kamila Shamsie, author of Home Fire "Boisterous, emotional, and heartrending, China Room juggles questions of love, debt, and what it means to build a home alongside the history that carries us. Sahota navigates the worlds between where we believe we belong, where we end up, and the choices we make to close the distance along the way, with humanity, precision, and grace--China Room is a propulsive dream, intricately wrought, and Sahota is a maestro." --Bryan Washington, author of Memorial "China Room is a stunning novel, I'm blown away by it. It's so complex and yet lucid and easy, so perfectly achieved. I was gripped from the first page to the last." --Tessa Hadley, author of The Past "An intense drama of classic themes--love, family, survival, and betrayal--told with passion and precision in Sahota's economical, lyrical prose. China Room is a brilliant novel. I won't forget any of these characters." --Adam Foulds, author of The Quickening Maze "Such a thrilling combination of beauty and heartbreak. It's breathtaking." --Charlotte Mendelson, author of When We Were Bad "China Room, a multi-generational masterpiece based in part on Sahota's family history, could well see him nominated [for the Booker] again." --The Daily Mail, "Books to Look Out For 2021"
