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China Room
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Publisher's Summary
Longlisted for the 2021 Booker Prize
Finalist for the American Library Association's Carnegie Medal
Named a Best Book of 2021 by NPR, Time, and The Star-Tribune
“Sunjeev Sahota's new novel follows characters across generations and continents...Heart-wrenching.” (Entertainment Weekly)
“An intimate page-turner with a deeper resonance as a tale of oppression, independence and resilience.” (San Francisco Chronicle)
A transfixing, "powerfully imaged" (USA Today) 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 both 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, it is a stunning achievement from a contemporary master.
Critic Reviews
Named a best book of the summer by Time, Lit Hub, Book Riot, and AARP
Named a best book of July by Entertainment Weekly, Good Morning America, PopSugar, and Apartment Therapy
“Sahota is an enormously gifted writer...a bold storyteller who seems to have learned as many tricks from TV as from Tolstoy, and has a jeweller’s unillusioned eye for the goods.... Lovely phrases glitter.... 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, The New Yorker)
“[China Room] forges telling and skillful connections between the two very different eras, showing the ways that a place - a house, a room - can store up pieces of a remarkable past and release them, generations later, when someone comes looking.” (The Wall Street Journal)
"[An] intense, heartrending novel.” (The Washington Post)
More from the same
What listeners say about China Room
Average Customer RatingsReviews - Please select the tabs below to change the source of reviews.
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Overall
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Performance
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Story
- Jan
- 09-13-21
China Room Confusion
Difficult to follow the story. One time frame blended woven into another and had great difficulty figuring out what was happening to whom, which wife belonged to which brother.
6 people found this helpful
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- Meena
- 09-28-21
Sunjeev Sahota does not disappoint!
The story of The China Room is one that I’ve never heard or imagined before. A cunning, shrewd, evil mother-in-law who marries off her three sons to three girls without the girls knowing which brother is their husband!
The author’s writing style and unraveling of the facts are just superb! It’s like he coolly drops bombs in the form of words!
I would definitely rate it as4.5*
4 people found this helpful
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- Naila
- 08-31-21
Great chronicler and stylist
Such beautiful, enchanting language, it's like a painting superimposed on photograph. An old tale, with notes of a contemporary story, reflecting a much larger social realm, delivered with shining phrases.
3 people found this helpful
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- Colleen Steer
- 10-05-21
Highly recommended
So many questions at the end. This book will stay with me for a long time.
2 people found this helpful
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- Judy A. Masters
- 10-23-21
lasting love stories
loved this book set in two time periods in India. a glimpse into the hard life of women without choice. beautifully written
1 person found this helpful
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Story
A moving novel on the power of friendship in our darkest times, from internationally renowned writer and speaker Elif Shafak. In the pulsating moments after she has been murdered and left in a dumpster outside Istanbul, Tequila Leila enters a state of heightened awareness. Her heart has stopped beating, but her brain is still active - for 10 minutes 38 seconds. While the Turkish sun rises and her friends sleep soundly nearby, she remembers her life - and the lives of others, outcasts like her.
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Unique and unforgettable adventure in Istanbul
- By Zu-Zu on 11-24-20
By: Elif Shafak
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Veins of Gold
- By: Charlie N. Holmberg
- Narrated by: Piper Goodeve
- Length: 9 hrs and 16 mins
- Unabridged
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Abandoned by their father for the gold rush, Gentry and her siblings labor to survive alone in the inhospitable West. When bizarre natural disasters begin wreaking havoc on the land, Gentry discovers a world of magic. Desperate for help, she accepts aid from a mysterious stranger. Winn not only sees the magic, but controls its hunger by feeding it gold - the very thing Gentry's father left to acquire. But the earth's unrest only grows worse, and Gentry's fear leads her to a terrible choice: marry a wealthy man she does not love or trust in Winn's unpredictable power to save her family.
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Poor world building and character development
- By WeveGotEars on 07-30-18
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The Parisian
- By: Isabella Hammad
- Narrated by: Fiona Button
- Length: 20 hrs and 18 mins
- Unabridged
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A masterful debut novel by Plimpton Prize winner Isabella Hammad, The Parisian illuminates a pivotal period of Palestinian history through the journey and romances of one young man, from his studies in France during World War I to his return to Palestine at the dawn of its battle for independence.
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Overly ambitious
- By Turtle on 06-16-19
By: Isabella Hammad
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The Unknown Errors of Our Lives
- Stories
- By: Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni
- Narrated by: Deepti Gupta
- Length: 6 hrs and 29 mins
- Unabridged
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In nine poignant stories spiked with humor and intelligence, Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni captures lives at crossroad moments - caught between past and present, home and abroad, tradition, and fresh experience. A widow in California, recently arrived from India, struggles to adapt to a world in which neighbors are strangers and her domestic skills are deemed superfluous in the award-winning "Mrs. Dutta Writes a Letter".
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Catalyst for introspection on life.
- By amanda shelton on 11-14-21
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The Virgin Blue
- By: Tracy Chevalier
- Narrated by: Janine Carter, Gigi Marceau Clarke
- Length: 9 hrs and 42 mins
- Unabridged
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Meet Ella Turner and Isabelle du Moulin, two women born centuries apart, yet bound by a fateful family legacy. When Ella and her husband move to a small town in France, Ella hopes to brush up on her French, qualify to practice as a midwife, and start a family, but a peculiar dream of the color blue propels her on a quest to uncover her family's French ancestry.
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excellent listening, mediocre story
- By Beth on 10-02-03
By: Tracy Chevalier
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The Henna Artist
- By: Alka Joshi
- Narrated by: Sneha Mathan
- Length: 10 hrs and 56 mins
- Unabridged
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Escaping from an abusive marriage, seventeen-year-old Lakshmi makes her way alone to the vibrant 1950s pink city of Jaipur. There she becomes the most highly requested henna artist - and confidante - to the wealthy women of the upper class. But trusted with the secrets of the wealthy, she can never reveal her own....
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Lyrical and inspiring
- By Anonymous User on 04-23-20
By: Alka Joshi
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The Death of Vivek Oji
- A Novel
- By: Akwaeke Emezi
- Narrated by: Yetide Badaki, Chukwudi Iwuji
- Length: 7 hrs and 38 mins
- Unabridged
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One afternoon, in a town in Southeastern Nigeria, a mother opens her front door to discover her son's body, wrapped in colorful fabric, at her feet. What follows is the tumultuous, heart-wrenching story of one family’s struggle to understand a child whose spirit is both gentle and mysterious. Raised by a distant father and an understanding but overprotective mother, Vivek suffers disorienting blackouts, moments of disconnection between self and surroundings.
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an emotional story
- By Barbara S on 08-22-20
By: Akwaeke Emezi
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The Graham Saga, Books 1-3
- By: Anna Belfrage
- Narrated by: Greg Patmore
- Length: 36 hrs and 51 mins
- Unabridged
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On a muggy August day in 2001, Alexandra Lind was unexpectedly thrown backwards in time, landing in the year of Our Lord 1658. Catapulted into an unfamiliar and frightening new existence, Alex could do nothing but adapt. After all, while time-traveling in itself is a most rare occurrence, time-traveling with a return ticket is even rarer. Fortunately for Alex, she lands at the feet of Matthew Graham. No woman could ask for a better guide or protector in this strange new world of hers.
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Explicit situations
- By PollyB on 09-01-21
By: Anna Belfrage
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How We Disappeared
- By: Jing-Jing Lee
- Narrated by: Angela Lin, Ryun Yu
- Length: 11 hrs and 49 mins
- Unabridged
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Singapore, 1942. As Japanese troops sweep down Malaysia and into Singapore, a village is ransacked, leaving only two survivors and one tiny child. In a neighboring village, 17-year-old Wang Di is strapped into the back of a troop carrier and shipped off to a Japanese military brothel where she is forced into sexual slavery as a “comfort woman”. After 60 years of silence, what she saw and experienced still haunts her. In the year 2000, when 12-year-old Kevin overhears his ailing grandmother's mumbled confession, he sets out to discover the truth, wherever it might lead.
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Heartbreaking and Important
- By Kelsy Rice on 11-13-20
By: Jing-Jing Lee
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The Bermondsey Bookshop
- By: Mary Gibson
- Narrated by: Anne Dover
- Length: 13 hrs and 48 mins
- Unabridged
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Set in 1920s London, this is the inspiring story of Kate Goss' struggle against poverty, hunger and cruel family secrets. Her mother died in a fall, her father has vanished without trace, and now her aunt and cousins treat her viciously. In a freezing, vermin-infested garret, factory girl Kate has only her own brave spirit and dreams of finding her father to keep her going. She has barely enough money to feed herself, or to pay the rent. The factory where she works begins to lay off people and it isn't long before she has fallen into the hands of the violent local money-lender.
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A glimpse into the past
- By Luci-Lu on 10-27-21
By: Mary Gibson
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The Elephant of Belfast
- A Novel
- By: S. Kirk Walsh
- Narrated by: Charlotte McCurry
- Length: 10 hrs and 51 mins
- Unabridged
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Belfast, October 1940. Twenty-year-old zookeeper Hettie Quin arrives at the city docks in time to meet her new charge: an orphaned three-year-old Indian elephant named Violet. As Violet adjusts to her new solitary life in captivity and Hettie mourns the recent loss of her sister and the abandonment of her father, new storm clouds gather. A world war rages, threatening a city already reeling from escalating tensions between British Loyalists and those fighting for a free and unified Ireland.
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Interesting Story, Bad Reader Ruined It
- By Diana Vargo on 05-07-21
By: S. Kirk Walsh
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Hamnet
- By: Maggie O'Farrell
- Narrated by: Ell Potter
- Length: 12 hrs and 42 mins
- Unabridged
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Agnes is a wild creature who walks her family’s land with a falcon on her glove and is known throughout the countryside for her unusual gifts as a healer, understanding plants and potions better than she does people. Once she settles with her husband on Henley Street in Stratford-upon-Avon, she becomes a fiercely protective mother and a steadfast, centrifugal force in the life of her young husband, whose career on the London stage is taking off when his beloved young son succumbs to sudden fever.
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A masterpiece
- By Molly-o on 08-03-20
By: Maggie O'Farrell
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The Outside Boy
- By: Jeanine Cummins
- Narrated by: Alan Devally
- Length: 12 hrs and 20 mins
- Unabridged
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Ireland, 1959: Young Christopher Hurley is a tinker, a Pavee gypsy, who roams with his father and extended family from town to town, carrying all their worldly possessions in their wagons. Christy carries with him a burden of guilt as well, haunted by the story of his mother’s death in childbirth. The wandering life is the only one Christy has ever known, but when his grandfather dies, everything changes. His father decides to settle briefly, in a town, where Christy and his cousin can receive proper schooling and prepare for their first communions.
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Pure Torture
- By Nena on 01-27-21
By: Jeanine Cummins