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

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Re: the 1990s narrative—I also didn’t buy that parents would send a teenage heroin addict in the immediate throes of opioid withdrawal to another continent to stay with relatives he’d not seen in years, one of whom is extremely angered by the young man’s presence. In the second strand, the narrator, Mehar's great-grandson, recounts a trip he made as an 18-year old heroin addict to the same part of Punjab, initially to stay with his uncle and aunt, and then on the now derelict family farm. Seale, William (1986). The President's House. Washington, D.C.: White House Historical Association. ISBN 0-912308-28-1. The novel is broken into two narrative arcs joined by blood. The major storyline is set in Punjab, 1929. The protagonist is 15-year-old Mehar. Mehar and two other women are all married to three brothers in one single ceremony. The intriguing part is that none of the women know which of the brothers is their husband. Mehar never sees her husband, working in the fields through the day, and at night he remains an elusive silhouette. When she does see him briefly through the day, her veil adds to his concealment.

SIMON: It is difficult, and I say this with admiration, to read about the total subjugation. You know, I would certainly feel free to call it a criminal subjugation of three women in a house. It's hard not to reflect on that part of what draws you in is it's hard for the great-grandson to understand how people lived. And yet, we're still - these generations are wound up with each other, aren't we? A story of forbidden love that echoes across generations - from the prize-winning author of The Year of the Runaways. Receive exclusive content, get news on our upcoming projects and much more... Want to see what to expect from our newsletter? I've been here a few times and if you're having the set menu mid week then its OK for what it costs.Sunjeev Sahota is a British novelist. Sahota was born in 1981 in Derby, and his family moved to Chesterfield when he was seven years old. His paternal grandparents had emigrated to Britain from the Punjab in 1966. After finishing school, Sahota studied mathematics at Imperial College London. As of January 2011, he was working in marketing for the insurance company Aviva. The first sentence reads, “Mehar is not so obedient a fifteen-year-old that she won’t try to uncover which of the three brothers is her husband.” It was like I was making up for lost time – not that I had to catch up, but it was as though I couldn't quite believe this world of storytelling I had found and I wanted to get as much of it down me as I possibly could. SAHOTA: Yeah, sure, so it's a photo of my great-grandmother holding me when I was a very newborn. And the photo was always there in my mind, and in my mind, it was always at the end of the book has a way of knotting these two stories together - the story of a great-grandmother, a story of Mehar, as you outlined, which is loosely based on a family legend of mine or my family's, some piece of lore about a great-grandmother who didn't know which of four brothers actually, in fact, was her husband. This novel has quite a few flaws, but I really enjoyed reading it, thus four instead of three stars. The title-giving China Room has nothing to do with the country in Asia, but refers to a small chamber shared by three young brides (and where some porcelain from their mother-in-law's dowry is stored). It's the year 1929 in rural Punjab, and 15-year-old Mehar wonders which of the three brothers of the house is her husband, as all three girls have been married the same day and are kept unaware of who is whose husband - sexual meetings always occur in a windowless room, in almost complete darkness. When Mehar presumes that she has found out which one is her spouse, tragedy ensues...

China Room really shouldn’t have worked for me — it’s kind of a sentimental historical drama, dripping with desire and forbidden love — but it touched me. I cared about the characters, was fascinated by the customs, and appreciated the long view that author Sunjeev Sahota provides by splitting the storyline between two members of a Punjabi Sikh family, three generations and seventy years apart. This is unlike Sahota’s last Man Booker nominated novel ( The Year of the Runaways, which I loved), and although it feels less deep, it worked for me. Rounding up to four stars. (Note: I read an ARC through NetGalley and passages quoted may not be in their final forms.) Morris, Edwin Bateman (1952). Report of the Commission on the Renovation of the Executive Mansion. Washington, D.C.: Government Printing Office. OCLC 1386079.Sunjeev Sahota examines his family history in this historical novel that moves between the early and late 20th century in India.