China Room begins in a Punjabi village in the 1920s. Mehar is one of three young women who have just been married to three brothers. They are all living under the authority of the men’s mother, Mai.

The three young women are not told which brother they are married to (it is not clear why – whether it is traditional or another way for Mai to control them). They are veiled by day and each is only alone with her husband when instructed by Mai to sleep in a pitch-black room. This leads to a misunderstanding which, combined with Mehar’s chafing against the limits of her new life, has dramatic consequences for them all.

There is a second strand to China Room, which is the story of an adolescent, the great-grandson of Mehar. It is the 1990s and he is sent by his family from their home in Britain to spend the summer in India. While there he lives and works on the farm where Mehar lived and hears hints of her story, while trying to work out his own problems.

The story of Mehar is fascinating. I loved the relationship between the three young women, each reacting differently to their strange new life. The writing is beautiful, atmospheric and understated. The drama is played out against the wider context of the growing movement for independence from the British.

There are so many dynamics playing out – between the siblings, between them and the matriarch, in the friendships of the women, between the genders. There is their relationship to the wider society – urban versus rural, between religious groups, between Indian and British.

I found the story of the unnamed narrator less interesting. It’s further complicated by a frame which has him, as an older, settled man in 2019, looking back at his teenage self, and then in turn linking it thematically with the story of Mehar. I must admit that my heart sank a little each time I started a chapter about him, and I was impatient to get back to what felt like the real story. I wish there was either more of Mehar and how her life led to the dramatically different experiences of her descendants, or a stronger narrative in the 1990s story.

There’s a family photo at the end, suggesting there’s a strong autobiographical element to China Room. It seems it was Sahota’s own experience that drove him to write the novel, but I keep thinking of that writers’ workshop saw – the thing you most want to say is the bit you should leave out.
*
I received a copy of China Room from the publisher via Netgalley.

It is 1929. Three young Punjabi wives, newly married to three brothers in one ceremony, are taken to the family farm run by their dictatorial mother-in-law, Mai, and housed separately to the family. Tradition demanding that they do not raise their eyes to see their husbands at their wedding, the wives can only spy the brothers outside their living quarters, trying to guess which man they are each married to.

Interleaved with this thread, seventy years later in 1999, a young English descendant of the family, runs to India to try to find a connection with his Indian roots and to escape his personal demons of drug addiction and years of racism.

Right from the tantalising start, Sunjeev Sahota has written a beautiful, compelling, engrossing and immensely readable tale connecting events in India 70 years apart. I was completely transported to the hot, dusty Indian farm as the tale, focusing on Mehar, one of the brides, unfolded. Sahota’s writing totally immersed me in this story of love, tradition and family.

The more modern day storyline provides breathing space from the claustrophobic world of the women and tensions of the farm, while offering a mysterious link back to the 1920s.

It is a story that will stay vividly with me for a long time. I look forward very much to reading more of Sunjeev Sahota’s books.

Many thanks to netgalley for a review copy of this book.

Unusual story set between 1929 and the 1990s - Mehar becomes a bride to one of three brothers (but she doesn't know which one!) and her great-grandson travels to India 70 years later to recover from addiction. In between, we discover traditions and the ways of life of rural Punjab. Well written and compelling read, shame it was so short!

A wonderful, engaging story with unforgettable characters. The different timelines were deftly handled, each one being as interesting as the other.

Three brides, three brothers and who is married to whom? 1929 in the Punjab and fifteen-year-old Mehar, one of the young wives is sure that she has identified her husband, despite the fact that any physical intimacy is conducted in utter darkness. Sunjeev Sahota’s portrayal of a woman’s battle to be an individual in a society where she is little more than a domestic slave, beholden to her husband and her mother-in-law, is a fascinating, immersive read.
Running parallel to Mehar’s story is that of a British Asian young man, banished in 1999 to his relations in India, in an attempt to cure his drug addiction. When he clashes with his aunt he moves into an abandoned family farm, lived in by Mehar seventy years previously. He knows little of his culture and, like Mehar before him, feels isolated and helpless. With plenty of time to think, he begins to understand what is important to him and how his family has dealt with suffering down the years.
This is a wonderful novel which, whilst set in two very specific times, encompasses so many important themes which touch us all. In turn, moving, thrilling, and surprising, ‘China Room’ is a memorable read. Thoroughly recommended.
My thanks to NetGalley and Random House UK, Vintage for a copy of this novel in exchange for a fair review.

“In that moment, Mehar sees what he sees, a country beyond convention, a life beyond the walls of the china room. How much of her love for him is bound up with this promise of freedom?”

This is a beautiful representation of how trauma is passed on through generations.
Although Mehar and her great-grandson are three generations apart, they both struggle with oppression and explore the idea of freedom. Sahota has created this tense atmosphere that matches the story so well. I really can’t stop thinking about this novel.

China Room by Sunjeev Sahota. I was really looking forward to getting my teeth into this one - I knew I would learn something about a different culture as well as read a good historical fiction novel.

Two stories – the first half in the late 1920s pre-independence and the last part of the book set in the late 1990s. Mehar the main character is one of three young women living in a house with Mai (mother in law) and are married off to three brothers. They are always kept away from the brothers, always veiled when in company and only meeting their husbands in a darkened room and only when instructed by Mai. Mehar then aged only 15 is determined to find out which one of the brothers is her husband. The girls only wish is to conceive a son. They spend most of their time in the China Room so called due to its décor. Everything about the young girl’s lives seems so oppressive and hard, the work, the claustrophobic veils, having to deal with the awful Mai and small suffocating areas that they had to work in and sleep etc.

The second story, 70 years later, focuses on a young man who is Mehar’s great grandson who is travelling from the UK to the Punjab to his uncle to try and fix his heroin addiction before starting at University - both stories intertwining.

All in all a good read, very thought provoking and at some points heartbreaking. The author draws us in with some excellent descriptive writing.

My thanks to Random House UK, Vintage, NetGalley and the author for the ARC in exchange for an honest review.

The China Room is a two part story set mainly in India. The first part is set in 1929 and features three young brides who have entered into arranged marriage with three brothers, but without being told which bride is married to which brother. The second part is set in 1999 when the great-grandson of one of the brides arrives back in India from his home in the UK, hoping to detox from his heroin addiction between A-levels and university. The story goes back and forth between the two time-lines, keeping up the pace to produce a real page-turner.

I enjoyed reading the novel, but the enjoyment was slightly marred for me because the entire plot would not have happened if the characters had had a single conversation, which frustrated me. But maybe it's based on a true story?

Thanks to the author, publisher and NetGalley for providing a review copy in exchange for honest feedback.

The China Room is where the women work in a house in the Punjab in 1920s India. Three teenage girls are married to the domineering Mali’s three sins but as sexual activity takes place only in the dark when one of the brothers has booked the room, they are not sure who they are married to. As the story remarks, ‘They grew up in a prison and then got married into one’. The author evokes a period of cultural history of which no one can be proud. It is important that it is remembered as an unacceptable social attitude to women but that doesn’t make it an easy story. Part of the book is also the account of the troubled teenager great grandson of one of the girls who travels to India from his family in England to explore his roots. Not much has changed so much later. This book is clearly well researched and it’s atmosphere carefully created but it is more a reminder of a bad period of history than a gripping novel.

First of all, I love Sunjeev Sahota. Year of the Runaways is one of my favourite books and I have gifted it countless times, so my expectations for China Room were stratospheric and it did not disappoint. Exquisitely written with the most beautifully intertwining between past and present; subtlety is the key in this book - so much is left explicitly unsaid but the story is complete and entire. I was encapsulated and enraptured and have no doubt that the next reader will feel the same.

The best and worst of family are showed in China Room. The room is where wives would go to submit to their husbands in a household ruled over by the tyrannical matriarch, Mai. Mehar is married into the family to service Mai's eldest son, but falls for the youngest in a case of mistaken identity.
In a later time, a distant relation stays in the same house to wean himself off a drug addiction. He is helped and supported by a kindly uncle and is able to accept himself and his upbringing.

Mehar, Harbans and Gurleen are three recently married young women living in rural Punjab in 1929. They are the brides of three brothers, but none of the three women know which brother it is that they have married. They spend most of their nights in the ‘china room’, where they share a pair of charpoys, string beds, and whisper together under the display of their mother-in-law’s wedding china that came as part of her dowry. However, every so often, one of the women is called to sleep with her husband in a ‘windowless chamber at the back of the farm.’ In the blackness, each struggles to identify her bridegroom, but at first, none of them are able to. With this compelling set-up, Sunjeev Sahota’s third novel, China Room, immediately has something of the folkloric about it. This is countered or perhaps enhanced by the modernity of Sahota’s language and his refusal to slip into distancing, archaic prose. This usually works very well, although there were a couple of phrases that made me pause: it does feel jarring for these isolated characters to say things like ‘Ants in your pants?’, although I get that Sahota is already ‘translating’ their words into English and so we’re already only getting a version of what they say. On the other hand, this decision definitely gives China Room the immediacy that a lot of historical novels lack.

Alongside the story of Mehar and her sisters-in-law, we follow an unnamed eighteen-year-old male narrator in 1999, who is detoxing from heroin addiction on his family’s farm in the Punjab, having grown up in England. Our narrator becomes slightly interested in his family history – we discover that Mehar is his great-grandmother – but Sahota doesn’t draw the connections tightly between these two threads, preferring instead that the stories mirror each other thematically through their depiction of social exclusion and agency. This makes the modern narrator feel a little unnecessary at times, as Mehar’s section of the narrative has much greater tension and direction. However, I did like the perspective that his experiences brought, as he reflects upon the vicious racism he suffered as a teenager, confounding some of our assumptions about the relevant privilege of a young man raised in modern Britain as opposed to a young woman in an arranged marriage in 1920s India. China Room didn’t have quite the same kind of impact on me as Sahota’s previous book, The Year of the Runaways, but it’s a beautifully quiet and moving novel.

This is the love story of Mehar and Suraj living in the early 20th century in Punjab. Mehar, along with two other girls have been given as brides to three brothers and are living under the rule of their mother-in-law. They are not allowed to know which brother they have married and must keep veiled at all times. Mahar wrongly identifies which brother she thinks she is married to and events unfold from there. Then comes the story of her great great grandson who, facing abuse in England, gets involved in drugs and goes to live in the family house where Mehar lived to try to cure his addiction. He has his own low-key love story. Both the stories are poignant and shocking to liberal British eyes, with racism and women treated as chattels. There is also a sprinkling of politics concerning India's independence struggle. I enjoyed this very much and Mehar's story is brought up to date satisfactorily at the end. There is also a photograph of a grandmother and baby, which suggests that parts of this may be the author's story.

I was really thrilled when I received this ARC. The theme sounded fascinating- 2 narratives set in Punjab, one in the 1920s pre-independence and the other set in the late 90s. Punjab has a very unique history ( like all Indian states, really, each is a separate distinct country for all practical purposes), and I expected an account of life in one of the largest states then, with a very diverse population, and an account of 90s Punjab with the beginnings of the drug problems, and the aftermath of the decades long secessionist movement and its violent putdown, and a discussion of the absolute desperate state of emigration from there. I'm very disappointed that I got none of this. The narrative strand set in the 1920s is about Mehar, married off young ( practice that still continues) , trying to settle in to her husband's home, and in a time where the purdah system was still prevalent ( still is in large parts of North India), she doesn't know which of three brothers is her husband. Women were not supposed to lift their heads in the presence of men, so Mehar has never seen her husband. This has unfortunate consequences for her life and attempt at gaining some agency. I expected this part to be historical fiction with the book taking Inthe context of the very turbulent setting , but the writer barely mentions that. There are some passing references to them discussing the situation, but barely any actual engagement with it. If there was no engagement, I would liked to have known why it made zero difference to them if India was a British colony, or not. Kala Sanghian, the village it's set in, isn't even an absolute backwoods, it's fairly close to Lahore and Jalandhar. What were their compulsions that drove their attitudes? Also, it felt like too much time was spent on the buildup , when I would have liked to have known how Mehar , someone who clearly wants more from life, managed to make it through and what wells of strength she drew on, for the rest of her life. Punjab is a state that faced the worst of Partition, and Kala Sanghian, located so near the border, must have seen the worst of it. If one read this book, one would think that her life just continued in the same vein when that's absolutely impossible in a newly independent country. Why set it in Punjab, then , and not use the context at all? The narrative strand set in the 90s is even worse- pointless and self indulgent and overly romanticising of Indian village life. The character is a teenager sent to Kala Sanghian to dry out, from a heroin addiction, and there's some tedious adolescent solipsism. The writing isn't even authentic- Chaturvedi isn't a Bihari name, for starters. Also some of it literally made me laugh out loud- a female character claims she found it hard to get a rural posting as a doctor and was expected to trade sexual favours for it. I'm not suggesting India is a paradise of equal opportunities for women. However, when it comes to healthcare, it's well known that rural India is woefully deprived, to the extent that medical schools mandate a year long rural stint which most students manage to bribe their way out of. In that situation, any doctor volunteering to work in a rural area would be welcomed as a miracle. So why was that sentence even needed?! I assumed he was sent to Punjab so the author could write about the burgeoning drug addiction problem there. Again, absolutely nothing about that. I'm not sure why this part was needed at all, I would have far preferred Mehar's life to have been written about more. The writer drops in instances of racism the protagonist and his family faced in England, but I would have also then liked an examination of the situation at home that they fled, and why they're willing to continue despite hostility elsewhere ( and are still fleeing, Punjab has among the highest emigration rates in the country, to the extent it's a complete business there).
A bit about the language used- I far prefer writers to use the actual idioms, or just do a direct translation- the characters set in the 1920s , for instance, sometimes lapse into a strange sort of pidgin English. Why would they talk English at all? They would be speaking Punjabi, so why not just write them as speaking fluent English? Obviously as a reader , you can make that connection. Some idioms are left in Punjabi while others are translated strangely- " Oh, go break an egg", which really isn't a commonly used idiom. And not in the 1920s.
As I said at the start of this review, I was really looking forward to this, and it was amazing when I got an ARC. I'm very sad to have to rate it so low.

The Punjab in 1929 and a young girl, Mehar, is married to one of three sons. But which one? Kept secluded, always veiled in company, and only meeting her husband in a darkened room, she and the other two wives married to the other two sons can never be sure just which husband is theirs. But Mehar is determined to find out. Seventy years on, and in the second of the now seemingly obligatory dual narrative convention, a young man, the great grandson of Mehar, makes his way from the UK to his uncle in the Punjab in attempt to sort out his heroin addiction before starting university. Partly based on real life, I found Mehar’s story really interesting and compellingly narrated. The concept of these women being so secluded that they don’t even recognise their own husbands is an intriguing idea, and the lives of these women is sensitively described. But I could have done without our unnamed narrator and his self-indulgent story. It adds nothing to the narrative and could have been dispensed with, making for a tighter storyline allowing the reader to concentrate on Mehar and her life. Overall, however, a good read, with some fine descriptive writing.

3.5 rounded down

A quiet, restrained and understand novel set in early and late 20th century rural India through two members of one family: Mehar is a teenage bride who is married to one of three brothers in a Punjab family in 1929. The two other brothers are also married in the same ceremony to two other young women, and due to this - and the fact that the wives lead separate lives from their husbands and their encounters are only in darkened rooms - she does not know which brother she is married to. Mehar tries to figure out which brother she is married to, and this discovery changes the path of her life.

Fast forward to 1999 and a young man from the UK travels to the now abandoned home of his relatives at the behest of his parents in an attempt to help him kick his heroin addiction. During his stay he meets a young local woman who he strikes up a friendship with, which changes the path his life takes too.

The two narratives share themes (beyond the fact that the two protagonists are relatives), with the 1929 storyline making up probably about 3/4 of the book. I wished the 1999 plot had been developed further, as the ending in particular felt rushed and I wanted the characters to feel more fleshed out as I think this would have allowed it to sit better with the 1929 chapters.

A quick and enjoyable read, I guess I was just hoping for something a bit more. That said I'd definitely read another book by this author, and fans of historical fiction may find more to enjoy here.

The China Room by Sunjeev Sahota is a wonderful, beautifully heart-breaking account of family discord and tradition from two characters' viewpoints, three generations apart.

Mehar enjoys life as carefree as any child until Monty breaks the news that she is to be married to a man she has never met at 15.

In a later timeframe, a troubled student arrives in the same village to stay a few months with his uncle to face down his demons and escape the pressures of life as a second generation immigrant in the UK.

Mehar lives with two other wives of Mai's three sons in the China room on the busy farm and is largely accepting of her fate until she realises that she has made a huge mistake which could threaten her future. Mai is a hard and unrelenting task master to everyone she comes across including her own sons, although Jeet, her eldest is chosen above the other two when she requires assistance.

The young student who strives in the village behind to wonder about his ancestors as he hears comments from different people. He makes friends with some local characters as he enquires.

The characters in this story are immensely believable; the atmosphere created by the author is so appropriate to the story, claustrophobic and tense. All the time, there is a persistent threat of constantly being watched and judged by the locals which makes life even more stressful.

Will look out for more from this talented author.

"There was one photo that I’d focus on, a small picture in a dark-wood frame. It was of my great grandmother, an old white haired woman who’d travelled all the way to England just so they she might hold me ………… The photo hung there quietly as I sat at the table, opened up my laptop and started to write ………… I’d been clearing the ground the better to see what was in front of me, which was the past. All sorts of pasts in fact, including the one that found me rehabilitating on a farm in India, in 1999, the summer after I turned eighteen".

This is the third novel by the author, who like me has a mathematics degree and like me started his career, post-graduation, working for a life insurance company (our paths rather diverged after that).

The author’s second novel “The Runaways” was shortlisted for the 2015 Booker Prize and was also winner of that year’s Royal Society of Literature’s Encore Award for literary second novels.

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.”

Now that strand – but much more firmly rooted in time, place and harsh reality, forms one of the two point of view tales which are interleaved in the novel – and perhaps draws more on a Shakespearean tradition of mistaken identity than magic realism.

Set in 1929 rural Punjab, we follow the third-party story of Mehar living in a small standalone building on a farm (known as the “China Room” due to its decoration) with two other women – Harbans and Gurleen. The three were married on the same day to the brothers: the oldest of which is Jeet and the youngest the rather rebellious Suraj. The family Matriach Mai gives the brothers permission to sleep with their wives on different nights – but the veiled women are not allowed to view their husbands. The narrative development in the book occurs when Mehar starts meeting Suraj (who she works out from observation must be her husband) outside of Mai’s supervision.

The second first-party strand is set 70 years later – as Mehar’s great grandson, shortly before taking up an unconditional offer to study Maths. at Imperial, travels to visit his Aunt and Uncle in India, ostensibly for a family visit but really in an attempt to go cold turkey from heroin addiction. His initial technique seems to be largely to use whisky as a substitute, and in the face of his Aunt’s hostility and his Uncle’s embarrassment he is shipped off to a deserted family farm and ends up staying in the same China Room.

There as he reflects on his upbringing – and the overt as well as persistent racism that his family faced after Thatcher-era redundancy lead them to give up their life in Derby (surrounded by family and kin) to set up a shop in an otherwise uniformly-white ex-mining town and which acted as a trigger for his addiction. He also starts a tentative involvement with a visiting Doctor and an initially awkward friendship with a local teacher (both around 20 years older than him) and the two start to draw him out of his addiction, while he also reflects on the locally well-known story of his great grandmother and discovers insights into his Aunt’s past.

This section is introduced in 2019 as the narrator returns to the family shop to nurse his father post a knee operation (see opening quote) – a real life incident which crystallised the writing of the novel.

Overall this is a novel I think for which the word “understated” will frequently appear in reviews.

The 1929 section is quietly powerful but the modern day section for me did not work as well as it could have done. Some of the sections set in the narrator’s childhood were very powerful – for example a remembered ill-fated visit to a birthday party, glimpses of the struggles in the lives of his parents – but I felt these could have been longer. And I felt that the narrator’s initial struggles with addiction were rather disregarded over time and replaced with more of a relationship story.

The real strength is the links though of ideas and themes between the two stories - a desire for belonging, identity, connection and of grasping for some form of self-determination in the face of societal prejudice and expectations. Mehar has her freedom constrained by a very prescribed role set out for her, the narrator and his parents by contrast when they move are constrained by the fact that they are seen as not having any welcome role at all to play in the life of the town.

The book is also underpinned by a sense of loss and of having to settle for a substitute or reduced status.

This extends beyond the narrator and Mehar, to his parents, to Mai, to both Jeet and Suraj (for different reasons), to his Aunt and Uncle (again mourning different things), and empathetically even to those who in the mining town (the “villain” in the birthday party scene is himself struggling with the loss of his miner-identity and the shame of his new job as a shelf stacker – deliberately taking night shifts so as not to be seen).

I received an email from the publisher offering me a chance to read this book via NetGalley. I have previously read and very much enjoyed Sahota’s “The Year of the Runaways”, so my thanks to the publisher for the opportunity to read this new work from him.

China Room is partly based on an episode from Sahota’s family history. There is a picture at the end of the book of a young child being held by an elderly woman. Since the book tells parallel stories of a man and his great-grandmother, we can draw our own conclusions.

The bulk of the book is the story of Mehar in 1929 Punjab. On her wedding day, she and two other women were married to three brothers. But none of the women knows which brother is her husband and the domineering family matriarch keeps the women separate except when the men visit in darkness attempting to conceive a child, preferably a son. Mehar wants to know which man is her husband and starts to note evidence until she comes to a conclusion. This conclusion sets the main story in this part of the book in motion.

The other, much shorter, part of the book (interleaved with Mehar’s story) tells us about an unnamed man, our narrator and Mehar’s great-grandson, who recalls a time in the 1990s when he visited his ancestral home in Punjab in an attempt to get his life back on track.

Mehar’s story unfolds in a lot more detail than our narrator’s, but echoes between the two begin to emerge. Both tell stories of the growth of impossible love. Mehar’s story plays out against a violent backdrop of the Indian independence movement whereas our narrator’s problems arise from the action he has taken to numb the pain of racism growing up in the UK. In one story, a woman has value only as a mother for a male heir and is otherwise ignored or oppressed. In the other, the oppression comes from the racism endemic in the culture. Different contexts but similar searches for freedom.

The writing is strong. It is understated rather than showy and it evokes a real atmosphere, especially in Mehar’s story. I can easily imagine this book being made into a movie. For me, the 1990s story felt a bit under-developed or rushed. It’s not often I say this, but it is only a short book and I felt it could have been longer with the two parts more equal in length.

3.5 stars rounded up.

China Room is set in India and covers the lives of two family members, Mehar who aged 15 in 1929 becomes a bride to one of three brothers and the other, her great grandson, an unnamed man from England, the son of an immigrant, who aged 18 in 1999 travels to India to clean himself up and get his life back together.

Mehar, along with her now two "sisters" dont know which of the three brothers are their husbands such is their oppression. With a mother in law who rules the home with an iron fist the girls days are made up of cleaning and cooking and looking after the house and the needs of their husbands.

Our unnamed man lives in a small town in England where people with brown skin are very uncommon and he and his family have faced racism and abuse all their lives. Looking for an escape he soon finds himself addicted to heroin. His trip to India to visit his relatives is an escape, a chance to try and clean his young life up. When he neglects to take proper care of his cousin while staying with his Uncle and Aunt in India, his Aunt wants him gone from their house.
He decides to move to the old farm that he used to play in as a kid on holiday visits. A family property, it is now abandoned and run down but the perfect seclusion for him as he tries to straighten himself out and make sense of his life. It also happens to be the property where his great grandmother Mehar lived as a child bride.

This is a beautifully written story, shining a brief light onto two completely different generations of the same family and their struggle with oppression and their fighting spirit and discovery of what true love may be like.

Portions of this have almost dreamlike quality while others are quite shocking. All the while the writing is beautiful, the characters jumping off the pages and the landscape of India beautifully described.

At a little over 250 pages its just the right length for what it is. I was left wanting for more. Dont get me wrong, the book itself is complete. I just enjoyed the writing so much that I didnt want it to end.

Many thanks to the publisher for sending me an ARC.