China Room (2021) by Sunjeev Sahota

Sunjeev Sahota landed his second Booker Prize nomination this week for China Room, his new novel.

Book Review

China Room (2021)

by Sunjeev Sahota

    Congratulations to Sunjeev Sahota and all the other authors on the Booker Prize 2021 Longlist!  Here is the full list:

A Passage North, Anuk Arudpragasam (Granta Books, Granta Publications)
Second Place, Rachel Cusk, (Faber)
The Promise, Damon Galgut, (Chatto & Windus, Vintage, PRH)
The Sweetness of Water, Nathan Harris (Tinder Press, Headline, Hachette Book Group)
Klara and the Sun, Kazuo Ishiguro (Faber)
An Island, Karen Jennings (Holland House Books)
A Town Called Solace, Mary Lawson (Chatto & Windus, Vintage, PRH)
No One is Talking About This, Patricia Lockwood (Bloomsbury Circus, Bloomsbury Publishing)
The Fortune Men, Nadifa Mohamed (Viking, Penguin General, PRH)
Bewilderment, Richard Powers (Hutchinson Heinemann, PRH)
China Room, Sunjeev Sahota (Harvill Secker, Vintage, PRH)
Great Circle, Maggie Shipstead (Doubleday, Transworld Publishers, PRH)
Light Perpetual, Francis Spufford (Faber)

    The biggest change in Booker eligibility recently was the addition of the United States- historically the prize was limited to books published in the UK Commonwealth- so South Asia, Anglophone Africa, the Caribbean,  Australia/NZ, Canada and of course the nations of Great Britain.   Of course, there was criticism of the decision to admit writers from the United States, but I really think it has solidified as the top literary Prize that isn't the Nobel- especially with their renewed commitment to the parallel Booker International Prize.

    Handicapping the shortlist and eventual winner starts by looking at the list for prior nominees and winners.  This year there are five books in that category- Ishiguro, of course, who just won the Nobel Prize, Sahota, Richard Powers, Damon Galgut and Mary Lawson.  Interesting to see if Ishiguro rate the shortlist for Klara, but I believe many of his books have divided reception- the Nobel Prize closes that argument, but not for everyone, I suppose.  Richard Powers and his not-yet-released Bewilderment is an interesting possibility- he scores a total zero for diversity points but the book is about neuro-diversity (autistic son and scientist(?) dad)- which could generate him that diversity bump.

  China Room is an intriguing possibility both for shortlist and winner, since Sahota has a prior nomination AND they managed to release it in the US the same week as the announcement- so, they have their act together.  There's also the traditional role of the Booker in bringing the writers of Anglo-Indian background to the attention of the wider world (America).  Galgut is South African and has two prior shortlists from the period before American got into the act- 2003 and 2010.  Galgut doesn't quite get a zero for diversity(He's gay) but he's still a white South African... but third time is a charm? 

   Mary Lawson is Canadian- with one prior longlist from 2006.  I wouldn't think she is a strong contender for either shortlist or winner.   

   Turning to the new nominees, A Passage North has heavy Booker vibes and an appealing post-Sri Lankan civil war theme (for major literary prizes I mean).  Rachel Cusk has hipster cache and connections in Canada, Los Angeles and London.  She is prolific- having just completed her trilogy last year and formally sophisticated- I would rate for the shortlist for sure, but not to win.  No One is Talking About This by American Patricia Longwood is another intriguing shortlist possibility, with even more hipster cred than Cusk, and it's a first novel.  Surely it is going to a huge boost for her book, which is already available in the remaining chain bookstores and every indie bookstore in America- sales hit coming!  Prestige television version! Etc.

   Then you've got the mystery box that is the remaining longlist first time nominees for an American reader of literary fiction.  The Sweetness of Water is a genuine best-seller from the US- Oprah's Book Club and all the trimmings of success.  The African-American author, Nathan Harris, doesn't even have a Wikipedia page- so just the longlist is huge for him.  Karen Jennings is South African with little international attention- hard to see her progressing with Galgut on the longlist and strong women writers up and down the longlist.  The Fortune Men by Nadifa Mohamed ticks all the boxes diversity-wise AND it's a work of historical fiction that involves the United Kingdom reckoning with past injustices.  That sounds like a potential winner!

   Great Circle is another work of historical fiction by an American author- which- looks like a book I want to read but I'm not sure how it makes it onto the shortlist against the competition.  Just the longlist is a great boost for a book like that.  Light Perpetual looks interesting, but English author Francis Spufford does, in fact, score a perfect zero for diversity points so I'd bet longlist is as far as he gets.

So my shortlist would be:

The Promise by Damon Galgut

The Fortune Men by Nadifa Mohamed

The Sweetness of Water by Nathan Harris

China Room by Sunjeev Sahota

Second Place by Rachel Cusk

Bewilderment by Richard Powers

Winner: The Promise by Damon Galgut

    So, yeah, China Room is good.  I assume there is at least one slot on the shortlist for a writer from Sri Lanka/India/Pakistan/Bangladesh.  Sahota combines the contemporary tale of a drug addled second generation English university student of Sikh-Punjabi decent who is trying to kick a nasty heroin addiction in his ancestral homeland during his summer break.  Things are not going well- people around him in India literally do not seem to know what drug withdrawal is ("Dengue fever" the village doctor opines) and his Uncle sends him to rehabilitate the family farm, where he meets a local doctor, a woman, etc.  This tale is intertwined with the tale of three brothers and their three wives in the 1920's, on said family farm.  It's a clever intertwining of two related stories and Sahota essentially manages to write two good short novels into one great regular novel.  That's the stuff that prizes are made of! Even if he doesn't win this year, chances are he will be back.