Burnt Sugar

SHORTLISTED FOR THE BOOKER PRIZE 2020A searing debut novel about mothers and daughters, obsession and betrayal - for fans of Jenny Offill, Deborah Levy, Rachel Cusk and Diana Evans'Utterly compelling, complex, unflinching realism - sometimes emotionally wrenching but also cathartic, written with poignancy and memorability' The Booker Prize Judges 2020'An unsettling, sinewy debut, startling in its venom and disarming in its humour from the very first sentence' GuardianIn 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.

'Acerbic, full of wit and cool intelligence - every sentence is a coiled spring and each psychological portrait burns itself into the mind. I couldn't put it down' Olivia Sudjic, author of Exposure and Sympathy'Crystalline, surgical, compulsively readable. An examination of toxic relationships and the ties that bind us' Sharlene Teo, author of Ponti