China Room

**Longlisted for the Booker Prize 2021**

‘Sahota combines great writing with amazing storytelling … I ncredibly immersive, gripping and very moving’ BBC Radio Four, Open Book

‘ China Room is a rare novel that makes you pause in its beauty’ Daily Telegraph

Mehar, a young bride in rural 1929 Punjab, is trying to discover the identity of her new husband. She and her sisters-in-law, married to three brothers in a single ceremony, spend their days at work in the family’s china room, 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 travels from England to the now-deserted farm, its china room locked and barred. In enforced flight from the traumas of his adolescence - his experiences of addiction, racism, and estrangement from the culture of his birth - he spends a summer in painful contemplation and recovery, finally gathering the strength to return home.

‘The stuff of miracles’
— Bryan Washington, author of Memorial
‘A gorgeous, gripping read’
— Kamila Shamsie, author of Home Fire
‘An extraordinarily gifted writer’
— New Yorker