The Spoiled Heart

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From the twice Booker-nominated author of The Year of the Runaways, a magnificent novel of love and politics, with a deeply moving family mystery at its heart In one night, Nayan lost everything. Years later, his world is at risk again. Nayan has fought hard to move on, losing himself in his political work, trying to make a better world. A fresh challenge arrives with newcomer Megha, who threatens not just his career ambitions, but his ideals. Meanwhile the enigmatic Helen Fletcher returns to Chesterfield and Nayan finds himself growing close to her. But Helen carries secrets which connect her to Nayan in ways he doesn't realise. The Spoiled Heart is an explosive story of how a few words or a single action - to one person careless, to another, charged - can trigger a cascade of unimaginable consequences. ''One of Britain's finest writers...page-turning' Observer 'Withheld revelations and dark secrets...plot-packed, propulsive' New York Times 'Gripping...irresistible...brilliant' The Times 'Utterly compelling, original and very moving' Tessa Hadley 'Moving and revelatory' Financial Times 'Smart and sophisticatedly written' Daily Telegraph 'Perfectly paced...gripping' Guardian

Reviews

One of Britains finest writers...page-turning drama * Observer, *Books of the Year* *
A smart and sophisticatedly written novel * Daily Telegraph *
An enormously sensitive novelist who works assiduously to shed light on life as it is lived, his characters always tangibly real, and fully three-dimensional. The Spoiled Heart balances its various narratives with subtle skill and a page-turning tension. Engrossing * i *
Reads like several books in one... The pages fly. If it doesnt get Sahota on the Booker longlist again, Ill be very disappointed * The Times *
Perfectly paced[and] gripping Sahota builds a forceful portrait of collective moral failure and responsibility The Spoiled Heart feels genuinely, uncomfortably contemporary a novel at once unafraid of judgment and admirably concerned about its consequences * Guardian *
Sahota has a surgeons dexterous hands, and the reader senses his confidence . . . a plot-packed, propulsive story . . . There is an easeful precision to Sahotas prose reminiscent of Kamila Shamsie and Jhumpa Lahiri, a painful irony that evokes Percival Everett, and a grand human downfall alongside a battle of ideas that is Ibsenesque * New York Times *
Incisive and poignant, his [Sahotas] fourth novel cuts to the merciless core of the culture wars, engaging with issues of loyalty, identity, inequality and community, and tracing the unforeseen consequences of actions that ripple through the years * Bookseller *
The Spoiled Heart finds a timeless imprint in the hot metal of the moment a tragedy like Fitzgeralds The Great Gatsby that has taken root in the mind of a haunted onlooker. How much can really ever be known or should be Thats the paradox this brilliant novel wrestles with and one that will consume any reader who picks it up * Washington Post *
The Spoiled Heart is not just cleverly structuredbut executed with rare literary intelligence * Critic, *Books of the Year* *

Author Bio

Sunjeev Sahota is the highly acclaimed author of Ours Are the Streets, The Year of the Runaways and China Room. The Year of the Runaways was shortlisted for the 2015 Booker Prize and the International Dylan Thomas Prize, and won the Encore Prize, the South Bank Sky Arts Award, and the European Union Prize for Literature. China Room was shortlisted for the Rathbones Folio Prize and longlisted for the 2021 Booker Prize, the RSL Ondaatje Prize and the Walter Scott Prize for Historical Fiction. Sahota was chosen as one of the Granta Best of Young British Novelists 2013 and is a fellow of the RSL. He lives in Sheffield and teaches at Durham University. The Spoiled Heart is his fourth novel.