China Room

The heartstopping and beautiful novel, longlisted for the Booker Prize 2021

Sunjeev Sahota author

Format:Paperback

Publisher:Vintage Publishing

Published:5th May '22

£9.99

Available for immediate dispatch.

This paperback is available in other editions too:

China Room cover

In 1929 young bride Mehar struggles with her family’s expectations whilst seventy years later her great-grandson discovers what her story can teach him about his own path.

'A gorgeous, gripping read' Kamila Shamsie
'A multi-generational masterpiece' Daily Mail

Mehar, a young bride in rural Punjab, is trying to discover the identity of her new husband. It is 1929, and she and her sisters-in-law - married to three brothers in a single ceremony - spend their days hard at work on the family farm, sequestered from contact with the men. When Mehar develops a theory as to which of them is hers, a passion is ignited that will put more than one life at risk.

Spiralling around Mehar's story is that of a young man who in 1999 flees from England to the deserted sun-scorched farm. Can a summer spent learning of love and of his family's past give him the strength for the journey home?

Readers love China Room
***** 'I didn't want it to end'
***** 'What. A. Book.'
***** 'Beautifully crafted...a story as old as time'
***** 'A novel of thwarted loves'

Shortlisted for the 2022 Rathbones Folio Prize
Longlisted for the 2021 Booker Prize

'Amazing storytelling...gripping and very moving' BBC Radio 4, Open Book

'I'm blown away by it' Tessa Hadley

'Moving...fresh and nourishing' The Times

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 *

ISBN: 9781784706364

Dimensions: 198mm x 129mm x 16mm

Weight: 181g

256 pages