The Year of the Runaways

Zusatztext 91257042 Informationen zum Autor SUNJEEV SAHOTA was born in 1981 in Derbyshire and lives in Sheffield with his wife and children. Klappentext Short-listed for the 2015 Man Booker Prize The Guardian: The Best Novels of 2015 The Independent: Literary Fiction of the Year 2015 From one of Granta's Best of Young British Novelists and Man Booker Prize nominee Sunjeev Sahota-a sweeping! urgent contemporary epic! set against a vast geographical and historical canvas! astonishing for its richness and texture and scope! and for the utter immersiveness of its reading experience. Three young men! and one unforgettable woman! come together in a journey from India to England! where they hope to begin something new-to support their families; to build their futures; to show their worth; to escape the past. They have almost no idea what awaits them. In a dilapidated shared house in Sheffield! Tarlochan! a former rickshaw driver! will say nothing about his life in Bihar. Avtar and Randeep are middle-class boys whose families are slowly sinking into financial ruin! bound together by Avtar's secret. Randeep! in turn! has a visa wife across town! whose cupboards are full of her husband's clothes in case the immigration agents surprise her with a visit. She is Narinder! and her story is the most surprising of them all. The Year of the Runaways unfolds over the course of one shattering year in which the destinies of these four characters become irreversibly entwined! a year in which they are forced to rely on one another in ways they never could have foreseen! and in which their hopes of breaking free of the past are decimated by the punishing realities of immigrant life. A novel of extraordinary ambition and authority! about what it means and what it costs to make a new life-about the capaciousness of the human spirit! and the resurrection of tenderness and humanity in the face of unspeakable suffering. Chapter 1 Arrivals Randeep Sanghera stood in front of the green-and-blue map tacked to the wall. The map had come with the flat, and though it was big and wrinkled, and cigarette butts had once stubbed black islands into the mid-Atlantic, he’d kept it, a reminder of the world outside. He was less sure about the flowers, guilty-looking things he’d spent too long choosing at the petrol station. Get rid of them, he decided, but then heard someone was parking up outside and the thought flew out of his head. He went down the narrow staircase, step by nervous step, straightening his cuffs, swallowing hard. He could see a shape through the mottled glass. When he opened the door Narinder Kaur stood before him, brightly etched against the night, coat unbuttoned despite the cold. So, even in England she wore a kesri. A domed deep-green one that matched her salwaar kameez. A flank of hair had come loose from under it and curled about her ear. He’d forgotten how large, how clever, her eyes were. Behind her, the taxi made a U-turn and retreated down the hill. Narinder brought her hands together underneath her chin—“Sat sri akal”—and Randeep nodded and took her suitcase and asked if she might follow him up the stairs. He set her luggage in the middle of the room and, straightening right back up, knocked his head against the bald light bulb, the wire flexing like a snake disturbed from its tree. She was standing at the window clutching her handbag with both hands. “It’s very quiet,” Randeep said. “It’s very nice. Thank you.” “You have been to Sheffield before?” “My first time. What’s the area called again?” “Brightside,” he said. She smiled, a little, and gazed around the room. She gestured towards the cooker. “We used to have one like that. Years ago.” Randeep looked too: a white stand-alone thing with an overhanging grill pan. The stains on the hob had...

Product details

• Authors: Sunjeev Sahota
• Publisher: Knopf
• Languages: English
• Product format: Paperback
• Released: 27.10.2015
• EAN: 9780451492999
• ISBN: 978-0-451-49299-9
• No. of pages: 484
• Dimensions: 131 mm x 201 mm x 23 mm
• Series: ALFRED A. KNOPF
• Subject: Fiction > Narrative literature