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

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Sahota neatly intertwines the threads connecting the past and present, never forcing obvious connections, letting the reader make its mind how the common forces of love and friendship shape the protagonists. And I felt that the narrator’s initial struggles with addiction were rather disregarded over time and replaced with more of a relationship story. Maybe a longer book or two separate books could’ve provided much needed detail and context to many parts of the story that were lacking. In his three novels, 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 and art makes, even for a moment, tangible. I felt no emotional punch or touch at the end despite the book being written competently enough, hence 2.

The narrative’s most important driver is that, while each of the brothers knows which wife is “theirs”, the veiled young women do not. But rather than feeling confined by whatever real-life elements informed its creation, it exists in a far more indeterminate, diffuse dimension, at times taking on an almost fairytale quality. Propulsive and subdued quite at the same time, the novel allows one to feel the weight of the traumas of misogyny, violence, racism, and other social strictures that bind its characters (including the protagonists as well as those in their periphery: the husband, the brothers and sisters-in-law, the immigrant parents, the uncle, aunt, and friends, all are similarly cut-off from attaining fulfilment, and therefore, freedom), even as it lacks a certain sense of solidity in prioritising essence over execution.Now that strand – but much more firmly rooted in time, place and harsh reality, forms one of the two point of view tales which are interleaved in the novel – and perhaps draws more on a Shakespearean tradition of mistaken identity than magic realism. The narrator takes up an opportunity to combat his addiction by visiting an uncle in Punjab before he starts at a London university; he goes armed only with whisky and a selection of books “all by or about people who had already taken their leave”. Sahota has said that China Room has its seed in his own family history, and a photograph at the end of the book, of an elderly woman cradling a baby, the surroundings suggestive of a few decades ago rather than a century, confirms an element of documentary about the novel. Mehar’s story plays out against a violent backdrop of the Indian independence movement whereas our narrator’s problems arise from the action he has taken to numb the pain of racism growing up in the UK. The Truman-era paneling was left unpainted until the Kennedy administration, when, in 1963, French interior designer Stéphane Boudin (1888–1967) of the Paris-based firm Maison Jansen, had it glazed in three shades of gray, with white detailing; corner brackets included in the display cabinet doors were removed at this time.

Sex takes place in darkness, with only the briefest of verbal exchanges; the rest of the time, segregation between husbands and wives is near total. The two other brothers are also married in the same ceremony to two other young women, and due to this - and the fact that the wives lead separate lives from their husbands and their encounters are only in darkened rooms - she does not know which brother she is married to. Speaking for myself: perhaps it was the cultural setting that rendered most of the plot predictable to me, but I was nevertheless hooked the entire time I was reading this book.Sunjeev Sahota examines his family history in this historical novel that moves between the early and late 20th century in India. Cleaning up the property as a project to occupy his days, he discovers the room where she lived, and hears rumors about her legendary life, full of brutality, scandal, and betrayal. The most daring (and youngest) of the women, Mehar, decides to risk everything to make a deeper connection with her spouse. 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.

It's a coincidence that before reading this novel I read “Great Circle” which also features a dual timeline where clues are gradually revealed in alternating stories to show a more complex and nuanced account of history.Through the hard work and the company of some locals, the unnamed character regains his health and hears stories about the customs that still thwart people’s desires. We reached out to Sunjeev to ask the renowned author our 21 Questions about life and literature; here, he discusses the sadness of Thomas Pynchon, the complicated life of an author, and his passion for running. It is the women’s responsibility to produce those heirs; enjoyment of the duty apparently isn’t supposed to be part of the deal. Living in Mehar’s former house and building a crush on an older female doctor who visits him there, he tries to separate facts from legends.

For the Vintage Books podcast, Sunjeev Sahota and Kamila Shamsie spoke with Ted Hodgkinson, head of literature and spoken word at Southbank Centre and a former International Booker Prize judge, about China Room, authorship, writing histories, and more. They are housed in the China Room (named for the dishes), apart from the family’s central residence.Despite knowing little of India, he finds himself in the family home in the Punjab to address his addiction prior to starting university.