China Room

LONGLISTED FOR THE 2021 BOOKER PRIZE FINALIST FOR THE AMERICAN LIBRARY ASSOCIATION'S CARNEGIE MEDAL 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 themselvesone 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 familys china room, sequestered from contact with the menexcept 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 doesnt want her to know. From beneath her veil, she studies the sounds of the mens 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 realityand dangerof her situation. Spiraling around Mehars story is that of a young man who arrives at his uncles 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 familys ancestral homean abandoned farmstead, its china room mysteriously locked and barredhe begins to knit himself back together, gathering strength for the journey home. Partly inspired by award-winning author Sunjeev Sahotas family history, China Room is at once 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.