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

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Two storylines are interwoven in this engaging novel from Sunjeev Sahota. The first is set in 1929 and examines the fate of 15-year-old Mehar. Along with two other girls, she has been married to three brothers in rural Punjab, but the identity of her husband is kept from her. Mistakenly believing it to be Suraj, the youngest sibling, she gives herself to him one afternoon, and a relationship blossoms despite the circumstances. In the present day, the narrator recalls the summer of 1999, when he travelled to the same part of India to stay with his uncle, in an attempt to battle his drug addiction. He turns out to be the great grandson of Mehar and is fascinated to hear stories of his ancestor that echo through the village. Assisted by a beguiling local doctor, he takes it upon himself to redevelop the crumbling house in which she lived, including the china room in which the three wives once slept. Sunjeev Sahota is the author of Ours Are the Streets and The Year of the Runaways, which was shortlisted for the 2015 Booker Prize.

And more importantly, the portrayal and treatment of women was a problem. This is not a women empowering book. Not every book needs to be, but I was horrified by what I read in this book. Women were only viewed as a wife or as sex objects. There was one woman who seemed to stand her own ground and be independent, but even then the narrator was thinking lustful comments about her. It felt very demeaning for women. None of the relationships had any actual chemistry or attraction in them. It was all lust and sex. Women were the inferior beings throughout this book and I tried to remind myself that the stories were set in a different time period, but even the women seemed to feel purely lust for the men. As a women, it was disheartening to read how women were discussed and presented in this book.

man is not intelligent while the computer system is (Dennett). 5. The Larger Philosophical Issues 5.1 Syntax and Semantics Later, she’ll wonder if that is the essence of being a man in the world, not simply desiring a thing, but being able to voice that desire out loud."

Both storylines converge in themes of escape and incarceration, whether literal or social and psychological. The narrator, living alone on the abandoned farm, having been shunned by his aunt and uncle, plays out an almost parodic tale of regeneration and reconnection that echoes Mehar’s less successful attempts at self-determination; their familial link hovers over the entire story, reminding us of the ghost-trauma carried from generation to generation.I liked how Sahota linked his motifs between the two storylines, and I also found the narrative suspenseful and interesting. Sure, many questions remain unresolved, and the novel could have been longer and could have given more details - in the end, I would have enjoyed to stay longer with the characters, because I wanted to know more about the years and people left out. The atmospheric writing is highly effective and touching. The novel is broken into two narrative arcs joined by blood. The major storyline is set in Punjab, 1929. The protagonist is 15-year-old Mehar. Mehar and two other women are all married to three brothers in one single ceremony. The intriguing part is that none of the women know which of the brothers is their husband. Mehar never sees her husband, working in the fields through the day, and at night he remains an elusive silhouette. When she does see him briefly through the day, her veil adds to his concealment. The story, inspired by Sunjeev Sahota’s family history is created with strong story-telling skills and a fair share of claustrophobic tension. The novel takes his title from the cramped china room – complete with willow-pattern plates—that the breeding mare (Mahar) must go to when requested by her officious mother-in-law to meet her “husband” and hopefully, “get with child.” Dual timeline story set in rural Punjab. The modern story involves a young man’s struggle with heroin addiction. He travels from England to India to live on his uncle’s farm while he goes through withdrawal. While there, he develops a fondness for a female doctor and learns more about a family secret involving his great grandmother. Many years later, he writes this story.

SAHOTA: It's very deliberate. Yes, she's very much handed over or taken, in fact. It's not like she has a choice. It's not even considered that she might want to know who she is, in fact, marrying. And the reason why she doesn't know who she's married to, it's left slightly opaque in the book. Is it just a sense of that no one thought to tell her? It's just a bit of negligence. Or is it the fact that her mother-in-law is so controlling and overbearing that it's a deliberate sign of withholding? I think it starts off as being that no one's actually thought that she might want to know who she's marrying into. And it becomes a way for her mother-in-law to actually control the entire house by extension. They live in the china room, which sits at a slight remove from the house and is named for the old willow-pattern plates that lean on a high stone shelf, a set of six that arrived with Mai years ago as part of her wedding dowry. Far beneath the shelf, at waist level, runs a concrete slab that the women use for preparing food, and under this is a little mud-oven. The end of the room widens enough for a pair of charpoys to be laid perpendicular to each other and across these two string beds all three women are made to sleep. Some have opined that this interweaving of two tales, apparently based on the author's own family stories, and set 70 years apart, gives short shrift to the more contemporary one - but while I'd agree it could have perhaps used a bit more explication in places, I didn't think it suffered any from the spotlight placed on the 1929 section. The author was discussing his ideas for a third novel in interviews around 2015 but in time the form of the novel changed – originally it had been intended as a magic realism novel roaming across time and with a rather broad sense of place, but it has ended as a much quieter novel, while still drawing on the same genesis - a family legend about his great-grandmother, who with three other women was married to four brothers – but “None of them knew which man she was married to ….because they had to remain veiled the whole time. There was no electricity. It was in the middle of nowhere on a rural farmstead and they didn’t know who was the husband, so the story goes.” His timeline and life connects with that of his great grandmother, Mehar, who as a young girl has an arranged marriage. She, along with Harbans and Gurleen, marry 3 brothers on the same day, in a period of time when they are expected to live under oppressive 'traditions' and rigid expectations, subject to the whims of rumours and judgements of small communities. Their lives are separate from the brothers, and whilst the men know who they are married to, they are kept in the dark, ruled over by their overbearing mother-in-law Mai, who organises the couplings, where there is a strong desire for a son. Any questions as to the brothers are rebuffed, and Mehar is to find her efforts for clarity and independence bring danger and threats.However in a nutshell, I really loved reading this book. I'm not sure if it is original enough to win a big prize like the Booker, but I love books set in India ( A Fine Balance, Shantaram, The White Tiger to name a few). This is a quieter, character-driven book, focused on emotions, specifically yearning . . .and books like that are my favorite. The writing reminded me a bit of Khaled Hosseini.

One of the novel’s two stories, set in the late ’90s, has a young British man of South-Asian descent visiting his uncle and aunt in the Punjab, apparently to sweat out his heroin addiction. Well aware of his aunt’s displeasure at having him in her home, he asks his uncle if he might stay on the abandoned ancestral farm, which he ends up partially renovating with the help of friends he makes in the village. Garrett, Wendell D (1995). Our Changing White House. Boston: Northeastern University Press. ISBN 1-55553-222-5. Mehar is not so obedient a fifteen-year-old that she won’t try to uncover which of the three brothers is her husband.” The whole concept of the girls not knowing their husbands leading to trouble (which kind of trouble you can very well imagine upfront) feels very YA to me, maybe fitting for a 15 year old main character, but still I can hardly believe when living in such a tight circle of 7 persons that one would make the mistake Mehar makes.Women are veiled and “the act” takes place in darkness with the briefest of verbal exchanges, so what could go wrong? Just this: Mehar falls in love with Suraj, the middle brother, believing he is her husband, and he, in turn, falls in love with her. This profane love cannot bode well.and carries grave risks. Sunjeev Sahota's writing is the stuff of miracles. Emotional and heartrending, China Room juggles questions of love, debt, and what it means to build a home alongside the history that carries us. China Room is a propulsive dream, intricately wrought, and Sahota is a maestro. Bryan Washington, author of LOT and MEMORIAL