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The Spoiled Heart

Sunjeev Sahota author

Format:Paperback

Publisher:Vintage Publishing

Publishing:12th Jun '25

£9.99

This title is due to be published on 12th June, and will be despatched as soon as possible.

This paperback is available in another edition too:

The Spoiled Heart cover

In one night, Nayan lost everything. Years later, his world is at risk again.

Nayan has fought hard to move on, losing himself in his political work, trying to make a better world. A fresh challenge arrives with newcomer Megha, who threatens not just his career ambitions, but his ideals.

Meanwhile the enigmatic Helen Fletcher returns to Chesterfield and Nayan finds himself growing close to her. But Helen carries secrets which connect her to Nayan in ways he doesn’t realise.

The Spoiled Heart is an explosive story of how a few words or a single action – to one person careless, to another, charged – can trigger a cascade of unimaginable consequences.

‘One of Britain’s finest writers…page-turning’ Observer

‘Withheld revelations and dark secrets...plot-packed, propulsive’ New York Times

‘Gripping...irresistible...brilliant’ The Times

‘Moving and revelatory’
Financial Times

‘Smart and sophisticatedly written’ Daily Telegraph

‘Perfectly paced…gripping’ Guardian



Readers are obsessed with The Spoiled Heart:

**‘A deft and artful novel when it comes to speaking around the philosophical questions that define our current 'culture wars'


**‘A compelling story that looks at a number of social and cultural issues but is basically a very absorbing narrative

**‘A masterful novel which asks important topical state-of-the-nation questions

**‘My favourite of Sahota's novels

One of Britain’s finest writers...page-turning drama * Observer, *Books of the Year* *
A smart and sophisticatedly written novel * Daily Telegraph *
An enormously sensitive novelist who works assiduously to shed light on life as it is lived, his characters always tangibly real, and fully three-dimensional. The Spoiled Heart balances its various narratives with subtle skill and a page-turning tension. Engrossing * i *
Reads like several books in one... The pages fly. If it doesn’t get Sahota on the Booker longlist again, I’ll be very disappointed * The Times *
Perfectly paced…[and] gripping… Sahota builds a forceful portrait of collective moral failure and responsibility… The Spoiled Heart feels genuinely, uncomfortably contemporary – a novel at once unafraid of judgment and admirably concerned about its consequences * Guardian *
Sahota has a surgeon’s dexterous hands, and the reader senses his confidence . . . a plot-packed, propulsive story . . . There is an easeful precision to Sahota’s prose reminiscent of Kamila Shamsie and Jhumpa Lahiri, a painful irony that evokes Percival Everett, and a grand human downfall alongside a battle of ideas that is Ibsenesque * New York Times *
Incisive and poignant, his [Sahota’s] fourth novel cuts to the merciless core of the culture wars, engaging with issues of loyalty, identity, inequality and community, and tracing the unforeseen consequences of actions that ripple through the years * Bookseller *
The Spoiled Heart finds a timeless imprint in the hot metal of the moment… a tragedy like Fitzgerald’s The Great Gatsby that has taken root in the mind of a haunted onlooker. How much can really ever be known or should be? That’s the paradox this brilliant novel wrestles with and one that will consume any reader who picks it up * Washington Post *
The Spoiled Heart is not just cleverly structured…but executed with rare literary intelligence * Critic, *Books of the Year* *

ISBN: 9781529931594

Dimensions: 198mm x 129mm x 35mm

Weight: 200g

336 pages