China Room by Sunjeev Sahota is a beautifully crafted novel that intertwines two narratives: Mehar, a young bride in 1929 Punjab, and her great-grandson in 1999. Both characters seek freedom from societal constraints. Sahota's evocative prose and rich character development make this a deeply moving exploration of identity and resilience.

I was thoroughly engaged by the complex world of "The China Room", the dual story lines was hard for me to stick with and see how fitting they were together. While, the novel's two interconnected storylines were intriguing, delving into themes of power struggles, cultural identity, and the human quest for freedom. The author's use of multiple perspectives, between Mehar in 1929 Punjab and a struggling addict in present-day England, offered a nuanced exploration of living under oppressive systems. While the prose was evocative and the plot was propulsive, I found some parts of the narrative to be overly dense and confusing, preventing me from fully connecting with the characters. Overall, "The China Room" is a solid effort, but one that left me feeling somewhat underwhelmed which may have been the readers' fault. I truly don't know too much about this historical time period and if I had I may have connected more to the storylines.

This book wasn't bad. I enjoyed the love story, but it was quite forgettable. This book seems to have a lot of recycled stories that I've read before. It all seemed familiar.

Partly inspired by his family’s history, Sunjeev Sahota’s novel, China Room, begins in 1929 Punjab, when three young women are married to three brothers in a single ceremony. As the women work hard on the family farm, from beneath their veils they try to piece together which brother is their husband.

Spiraled among this story are two other timelines, one in 1999, when the great-grandson of one of the brides returns to the family farm to fight an addiction, and 2019, when that same great-grandson returns to his parents home to write the story.

I recently spoke with Sunjeev Sahota from his home in London about this novel based on his fascinating family legend.

One of my favorite books is A Fine Balance. Both this book and that are set in India, Both are heartbreaking. AFB, however gives moments of joy. This, is utterly depressing. I have always heard about arranged marriages in India, but this book took it to a whole new level for me. To not even know which of three brothers is your husband? To have conjugal visits in the dark so again you don’t even know which face of the three brothers belongs to your husband? Despite the content, the author is a gifted writer and one cannot fault his prose. Thanks to NetGalley for a complimentary copy of the book in exchange for my honest review.

China Room reminded me of the lack of control women have had over their own lives throughout history and that continues to this day in many cultures. It’s hard to fathom that Mehar and her sisters-in-law didn’t even know who their husbands were. Their primary roles were to submit to their husbands and produce male heirs. This subjugation came from another woman, which was even more disturbing. The book also opened my eyes to the racism people of Indian descent experienced as recently as twenty years ago and the horror of self-detoxing from heroin without the assistance of withdrawal medication.
Some of Sahota’s writing was beautifully lyrical, and the premise was fascinating, but overall, but it was too minimalistic and disjointed and the dots between the storylines weren’t well connected. In my view it was nothing special. 3 stars.

India in 1929 and again in the contemporary era, provides the time periods for this novel, taking place in the Punjab area. The first timeline revolves around Mehar, committed at an early age to marry one of Mai’s three sons, without knowing which brother was to be her husband. Once married, her life becomes one of daily chores unless called to the China room, where the husband can then have sex with the wife. The second story line revolves around a man looking back at the time he was 18, and sent to his Uncle’s house to detox from a heroin addiction. As his Aunt cannot accept him, he goes to live on the family’s uninhabited farm, previously where Mehar, his great grandmother lived. This is a well written and absorbing book, heavy at times but a rewarding read. Thanks to NetGalley for the ARC.

The China Room by Sunjeev Sahota
This is a wonderful book set in 1929 rural Punjab during the British occupation of India. The story is told from two points of view and two timelines. The first is Mehar, a newly wed young bride, who is trying to determine the identity of her husband. Married in a ceremony with two other couples, Mehar never sees her husband's face. The second timeline is set in 1999 and told from Mehar's grandson point of view. He's a young man struggling with his own demons and returns to the same farm in rural Punjab. It's an excellent story filled with humor and heart.

Sunjeev Sahota’s China Room Reclaims Family Generations Later

After reading Sunjeev Sahota‘s new minimalistic book, China Room, visions of the story and his writing linger and invite revisiting. Not having read his two previous novels—including The Year of the Runaways, which was shortlisted for the Booker Prize—I’m eager to compare them to this engulfing tale built of economical language filled with imagery, pain, and possibilities.

In 1929, while freedom fighters scour the country for new recruits, fifteen-year-old Mehar is married, one of three brides to three brothers. Neither she, her family, or the other brides know which of the brothers is whose husband. The girls, mostly sequestered, live and work in the “china room,” a small, suffocating place with their mother-in-law’s unused dowry on display. Mehar thinks she’ll be clever when her husband comes to her for sex in a different small, pitch-dark chamber. During their allowed times together as authorized by the groom’s mother, Mehar listens to the few but gentle words he speaks and maps the feel of his hands.

One day, after her husband tells her that pearls under her pillow will help her become pregnant, she fails to see when he gives the pearls to his youngest brother to present to their mother. She does see, from a distance, the youngest brother holding the pearls and believes him to be her husband. A dangerous scenario follows, and eventually, her curiosity and assumption lead to grave consequences.

Alternately, it’s 2019. A young man whose name we only know as S- reminisces about 20 years earlier when he seeks to escape the ever-present racism in his northern England town and the demons of his addiction. On his family’s near-crumbling farm in rural Punjab, he wonders about the barred windows on the property.

Living alone on the farm, he self-detoxes, the night stars acting as his silent witnesses. With various new acquaintances, he pours his waking energy into cleaning and painting the farm’s buildings and regains his self-esteem. He comes to learn about his great-grandmother, Mehar Kaur, and her fate through stories told by those who remembered her, knew of her, or had heard the legends about her.

I confess I felt contempt as I read, but not for the author whose writing was simple on its face and complex on a deeper level. Was it contempt for the mother-in-law who “hired” female children as nothing more than workhorses and broodmares? For the men who accepted such treatment of their young wives? The bullies who terrorized S-ʼs family? In the end, it was angry grief I felt for Mehar, her sister-brides, and later, for S-. Each of the characters in the story is imprisoned by someone or something. Sahota never promises a happy ending despite similes and metaphors so substantial you can touch them.

Nevertheless, Mehar’s great-grandson returning 70 years after and telling his story 20 years later offers a spark of wonder that holds great promise for all that carefully remains untold. Both Mehar and her great-grandson live and breathe the same small truths of their lives, tormented, and trapped until each decides to do something to foment change. How that change endures is unspoken. In some measure inspired by Sahota’s own family, China Room is a
heartbreakingly quiet, sensitive, and beautifully written story of what one life means in the present and how it impacts other lives generations into the future.

This review originally appeared in the 16 Jul 2021 issue of India Currents Magazine

The story takes place in two distinct time periods. One is 1929 and Mehar is pushed into an arranged marriage that becomes quite complicated. The other is 2019 and her great grandson is trying to recover from his addiction while also attempting to learn more about his family history. Mehar’s story is the one I felt more interested in and enjoyed the writing style during that plot line more. Overall this book that deals with obligations, family, love/lust and many other human emotions and experiences is one I would recommend to specific people but maybe not for all. Thank you to the publisher for providing me with this drc available through netgalley.

It’s colonial India in 1929, and three unrelated young girls—aged 15 to 17—wed three brothers in a joint ceremony. For reasons known only to the girls'' mother-in-law—most likely, to cement her authority in the household—the brides are not permitted to know which of the three brothers each of them has married. Their interactions with their husbands take place in a darkened room; these assignations take place on a schedule controlled by the mother-in-law; and the brides, when not performing daily household chores, spend their time in the China Room, a one-room hut set aside from the main house.

The youngest of the three girls, Mehar, rebels against these bounds. She’s determined to identify her husband, and she’s convinced she has succeeded when she sees Suraj, the youngest brother, carrying a string of pearls the day after she shares, during one of those night-time encounters, the local superstition that pearls help a woman conceive a child. Suraj doesn’t correct Mehar when she challenges him in private, and she learns only later what the reader has known all along: that she has made a mistake. The consequences of her error ripple throughout the family, destroying lives and marriages..

Ninety years later, Mehar's great-grandson, a young heroin addict raised in the Indian immigrant community in Britain, returns to his parents' homeland and begins to uncover what happened in the China Room. Although this part of the story, to my mind, can't quite hold its own against the more dramatic past, we do get to see the contemporary protagonist wrestle with his heritage and take preliminary steps toward a more rewarding future. I hope to host a written Q&A with the author on my blog (linked below) in a few weeks.

A beautifully written novel that blends historical and contemporary fiction. One thread follows Mehar, a teenage bride in rural Punjab. She and her two new sisters-in-law are married to three brothers in a single wedding ceremony. Cut off from direct contact with the men, none knows which one is her husband. They work to serve their husbands and Mai, their overbearing mother-in-law, by day and occasionally are summoned to visit their husbands at night. Desperate to know which of the brothers is her husband, Mehar begins to search for clues. But her desire could have dire consequences.

The other thread follows an unnamed young man spending the summer in Punjab. Born and raised in England, this summer with family is meant to be an escape from his heroin addiction. Finding himself isolated at the abandoned farmstead that was once his ancestor’s home, he faces the realities of withdrawal and reflects on the racism and violence that have shaped his life and the lives of those who came before him.

I struggled with the dual narratives of this novel. Each was intriguing, but deserved more time and exploration than they get here. The end, especially, feels abrupt and rushed.

Two stories are intertwined, that of a lonely young man who is addicted to heroin and the summer he spent in rural Punjab before college and that of a more interesting story of a young woman in 1929, who turns out to be his great-grandmother. 16-year-old Mehar is a young bride who lives in a cramped room with two other women were married to three brothers at the same time. They live in the “China room” so named because it it contains willow-patterned china that was once part of a dowry. They spend their time there unless called to serve their mother-in-law or summoned to a bedroom hopefully to produce an heir. And as the story progresses, we learn not only more about the girls, but their recently widowed mother-in-law. It’s a very quiet story with a lot of pain as the reader puts together the fragments of lives portrayed in the book.

A thoughtfully-written historical novel with braided narratives. It's always a challenge when mining family history for fiction but Sahota does a smooth job of blending fact and fiction to give us two high drama stories: one in the past and one in the present. And, in the process, he shows how the past shapes the present in many small but significant ways. A simply-told but profoundly moving story.

China Room jumps back and forth between two storylines: one in the early 20th century and one at its close, one of a young woman named Mehar married off and one of a young man struggling with addiction. Sahota writes beautifully and while there are moments you wish to delve deeper, his novel is moving.

In 1929, three brides are married to three brothers in a single ceremony in rural Punjab. As Mehar tries to discover which of the three brothers is her husband, a misunderstanding causes lasting consequences. Years later, Mehar's great-grandson returns to India hoping to recover from his drug addiction.

As the two main characters struggle to find freedom in two different time periods, Sahota's novel (based somewhat on his family's history) uses sparse descriptions and limited glances, letting the reader fill in the gaps. This literary style is gorgeous in its own way but is not the lush detailed writing typical to historical fiction. Often the fragmentation as the perspective changed confused me, and I wish transitions had been smoother.

I just couldn't get going with this title. I read to the 40% mark and just didn't feel engaged enough with any of the characters to keep reading.

China Room is a multigenerational saga that takes place in a sleepy village in Punjab, India. I enjoyed how the novel starts out slow but still interesting, and then expands into a deeply nuanced story. There is a lot of monotony to each characters day - both those living in the 1920s, and those of the 70s, yet the author manages to keep your interest in the story.

The two lead characters, great grandmother and great grandson, separated by 50+ years and two different continents couldn't possibly lead more different lives, but it was lovely how the author brought them together in the same home and the 'china room'.

While there was a part of me that wished we could have known more about what happened to each character at the end of their part of the story, and I had a sense of an unfinished story, I wonder if that was Sunjeev Sahota's intention - to leave you dreaming up what might have happened next in your own imagination.

I find that I really enjoy reading historical fiction set in India that give me a sense of the culture and times. This book did not disappoint in that regard, especially since I don't really know much about that time period in general. I found myself invested in the story of Mehar, and I just HAD to see how her story ended. I have to say that I think it's really gutsy of an author to not go the easy route in terms of endings and what people want. I really respect that.

With that said, I didn't see the point of intertwining the storyline of Mehar's descendant with what happened earlier. It was just kinda there and didn't add to the book in my opinion. Those bits could have been easily cut out. Overall, I would recommend this to people who enjoy historical fiction set in the early 20th century looking to explore Eastern cultures through reading.

A beautifully written novel that juxtaposes a young man experiencing heroin withdrawal with the story of a young woman in an arranged marriage in 1929 Punjab who unsure which of three brothers she is married to.