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LONGLISTED FOR THE WOMEN’S PRIZE 2021

The hottest debut of 2020, an unmissable, Booker-shortlisted novel which everyone’s talking about: a searing, compulsively readable tale of mothers and daughters, love and betrayal

PICKED AS A BOOK OF THE YEAR 2020 BY the Guardian, Economist, Spectator and more…

‘Arresting and fiercely intelligent, disarmingly witty and frank’ Sunday Times

‘Extraordinary. Exquisitely written, painfully exhilarating, impossible to put down… Come for the effortlessly stylish writing, stay for the boiling wrath’ Observer

‘Beautifully written with startling imagery – emotionally wrenching and poignant in equal measure’ The Booker Prize Judges 2020

In her youth, Tara was wild. She abandoned her arranged marriage to join an ashram, took a hapless artist for a lover, rebelled against every social expectation of a good Indian woman – all with her young child in tow. Years on, she is an old woman with a fading memory, mixing up her maid’s wages and leaving the gas on all night, and her grown-up daughter is faced with the task of caring for a mother who never seemed to care for her.

This is a poisoned love story. But not between lovers – between mother and daughter. Sharp as a blade and laced with caustic wit, Burnt Sugar gradually untangles the knot of memory and myth that bind two women together, revealing the truth that lies beneath.

‘An unsettling, sinewy debut, startling in its venom and disarming in its humour from the very first sentence’ Guardian

‘A corrosive, compulsive debut’ Daily Telegraph (*****)

‘Scouringly brilliant, a blazing debut with words that glitter sharp as shards of broken mirror’ Buro.

Publisher Review

A disturbing tale of memory and forgetfulness, questioning the relevance and the authenticity of both * Indian Express * A masterclass. Crisp, engaging, perfectly tragic in the way that families often tend to be... Doshi writes sharply, in no-nonsense prose, not a single sentence in the book can be omitted... Avni Doshi is a force to watch out for in the literary world * Scroll * Beautifully grotesque, vivid, unexpected. Doshi knows her characters so intimately I felt I could reach out and touch the skin they're in * Diksha Basu, author of 'The Windfall' * Avni Doshi quietly, cleanly, slices through the heart... Impeccably insightful, carved from love, rage, and grief, here all embellishment is discarded, all artifice shorn - motherhood, family, memory, language - to reveal something devastating about our relationships, with ourselves and with those closest to us * Janice Pariat, author of 'The Nine-Chambered Heart' * A courageous novel written in spare, gleaming sentences. It made me hold my breath and gather it up again * Tishani Doshi, author of 'Girls Are Coming Out of the Woods' *