The Spoiled Heart
Format:Hardback
Publisher:Vintage Publishing
Published:25th Apr '24
Should be back in stock very soon
'Gripping… irresistible… brilliant' The Times
'Perfectly judged and intimately alive' Guardian
Nayan Olak hasn’t risked love since his young son died.
Instead he has ploughed his grief and energy into his work at the union, trying to create the world he would have wanted for his boy. Now he’s running for the leadership: a huge moment for Nayan, the culmination of everything he believes.
As he grows closer to the mysterious Helen Fletcher, and to the possibility that their pasts may have been connected, much more is suddenly threatened than his chances of winning. And when Megha Sharma, a new candidate with new politics, bursts into the picture, the race of a lifetime is on.
'A plot-packed, propulsive story'New York Times
'Restless, inquiring, utterly topical. The Spoiled Heart may be his finest yet, with a tumultuous but perfectly sustained ending that proves both moving and revelatory' Financial Times
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’
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 *
A smart and sophisticatedly written novel * Daily Telegraph *
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 *
Billed to be his breakout… [The Spoiled Heart is] sure to be something special * Daily Mail, *Books to Look Out For 2024* *
Sahota’s well-wrought fourth novel adds to an already impressive body of work * Mail on Sunday *
Each of Sahota’s books builds on the ambition of the previous one: restless, inquiring, utterly topical. The Spoiled Heart may be his finest yet, with a tumultuous but perfectly sustained ending that proves both moving and revelatory * Financial Times *
The prose is spare, characterization rich and nuanced, and the portrayal of the psychological effects of urban desolation approaches that of Dickens in Our Mutual Friend… The Spoiled Heart is a highly accomplished and timely political morality tale * Spectator *
ISBN: 9781787304079
Dimensions: 225mm x 146mm x 31mm
Weight: 446g
336 pages