Author(s): Sunjeev Sahota

Novel | India | England | Historical

1929. At a farm in Punjab, northern India, three girls are married to three brothers in one ceremony. For weeks afterwards, segregated from the men in the 'china room', heavily veiled, and meeting their husbands only under cover of darkest night, none of the girls is entirely sure which brother is hers.

Mehar, the youngest of the three, is determined to find out, and while her efforts lead her into overwhelming love, her story of misplaced identity has tragic, horrifying consequences.

1999. A young man arrives in northern India from the UK to spend the summer with distant relatives. He spends weeks under the merciless sun, in solitude, at the abandoned family farm, with its peeling paint and mysterious locked room.

Review: 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. -- Francesca Carington * Sunday Telegraph, *Novel of the Week* *
Sahota is a truly original novelist, his prose sparingly precise in its beauty, steeped in kindness and deep humanity. -- Ruth Scurr * TLS *
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' *
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. -- James Wood * New Yorker *

Author Biography: Sunjeev Sahota is the author of Ours Are the Streets and The Year of the Runaways, which was shortlisted for the 2015 Man Booker Prize, the International Dylan Thomas Prize and the Sunday Times Young Writer of the Year Award, and won the Encore Prize, the European Union Prize for Literature, and the South Bank Sky Arts Award. He was chosen as one of Granta's Best Young British Novelists in 2013. He lives in Sheffield.