Critics' Opinion:
Readers' rating:
Published Jul 2021
256 pages
Genre: Historical Fiction
Publication Information
A transfixing novel about two unforgettable characters seeking to free themselves—one from the expectations of women in early 20th century Punjab, and the other from the weight of life in the contemporary Indian diaspora.
Mehar, a young bride in rural 1929 Punjab, is trying to discover the identity of her new husband. Married to three brothers in a single ceremony, she and her now-sisters spend their days hard at work in the family's "china room," sequestered from contact with the men—except when their domineering mother-in-law, Mai, summons them to a darkened chamber at night. Curious and strong willed, Mehar tries to piece together what Mai doesn't want her to know. From beneath her veil, she studies the sounds of the men's voices, the calluses on their fingers as she serves them tea. Soon she glimpses something that seems to confirm which of the brothers is her husband, and a series of events is set in motion that will put more than one life at risk. As the early stirrings of the Indian independence movement rise around her, Mehar must weigh her own desires against the reality—and danger—of her situation.
Spiraling around Mehar's story is that of a young man who arrives at his uncle's house in Punjab in the summer of 1999, hoping to shake an addiction that has held him in its grip for more than two years. Growing up in small-town England as the son of an immigrant shopkeeper, his experiences of racism, violence, and estrangement from the culture of his birth led him to seek a dangerous form of escape. As he rides out his withdrawal at his family's ancestral home—an abandoned farmstead, its china room mysteriously locked and barred—he begins to knit himself back together, gathering strength for the journey home.
Partly inspired by award-winning author Sunjeev Sahota's family history, China Room is at once a deft exploration of how systems of power circumscribe individual lives and a deeply moving portrait of the unconquerable human capacity to resist them. At once sweeping and intimate, lush and propulsive, itis a stunning achievement from a contemporary master.
"Mesmerizing ... Simultaneously visceral and breathless, this is one knockout of a novel." - Booklist (starred review)
"Though the various parts are uneven, it's well worth the time." - Publishers Weekly
"By including both storylines in this short novel, Sahota limits his ability to deeply explore either, and the result feels like a missed opportunity. A beautifully written but narratively limited family saga." - Kirkus Reviews
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 (London)
"A lovely, dream-like novel ... Sahota gives his period narrative the same effortless immediacy as his present-day one, yet his novel works by stealth, quietly beguiling the reader into an almost painful intimacy with his characters' respective culturally circumscribed lives. I loved it." - Claire Allfree, The Daily Mail (London)
"Beautifully realized ... Sahota is a truly original novelist, his prose sparingly precise in its beauty, steeped in kindness and deep humanity." - Ruth Scurr, Times Literary Supplement (London)
"Engrossing ... Intricate yet compact ... the story's deceptively placid style renders its combustible elements all the more devastating ... [An] excellent novel." - Anthony Cummins, Literary Review (London)
"[Sahota] is a restrained stylist whose details bloom in the imagination ... [there is] respite, even solace, to be found in [his] precise and exhilarating observation." - Harper's Magazine
"There is a scrupulous subtlety about that way that Sahota refuses to let his historical characters act as though they are in a historical novel ... Sahota has demonstrated an ambitious need to adapt the specific and concrete to something less easy to pin down, complete with all the gaps and ruptures that life provides." - Alex Clark, The Guardian
"A family saga both sweeping and granular ... [that] examines agency, power and human connection." - TIME
"Magnificent ... Sahota brilliantly plays with access to knowledge, to history ... promises to haunt and illuminate." - Shelf Awareness
"Themes of freedom and imprisonment are knitted through both stories, which, despite the historical setting, are resolutely inward-looking ... Poised and poignant, China Room is a rare novel that makes you pause in its beauty." - Francesca Carington, The Telegraph (London)
"Sahota's beautifully crafted novel dovetails two stories from different eras… Both characters are prisoners of circumstance but, in their hunger for redemption, become emblematic of the human condition." - Mail on Sunday
This information about China Room was first featured
in "The BookBrowse Review" - BookBrowse's membership magazine, and in our weekly "Publishing This Week" newsletter. Publication information is for the USA, and (unless stated otherwise) represents the first print edition. The reviews are necessarily limited to those that were available to us ahead of publication. If you are the publisher or author and feel that they do not properly reflect the range of media opinion now available, send us a message with the mainstream reviews that you would like to see added.
Any "Author Information" displayed below reflects the author's biography at the time this particular book was published.
Sunjeev Sahota is the author of Ours Are the Streets and The Year of the Runaways, which was shortlisted for the Man Booker Prize and the Dylan Thomas Prize, and was awarded a European Union Prize for Literature. In 2013, he was named one of Granta's twenty Best of Young British Novelists of the decade. He lives in Sheffield, England, with his family.
Name Pronunciation
Sunjeev Sahota: SUHN-jeev suh-HO-tuh
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