On the release of his third novel, 2021’s Booker-longlisted China Room, Sunjeev Sahota noted with some frustration the limiting lens through which his work tends to be viewed. “Everyone always comments on the fact that my novels all have brown protagonists,” he remarked, “but what no one ever says is that there aren’t actually any characters in my novels who aren’t working class.”
As is to be expected from a novelist whose work has addressed religious radicalisation, migration and intergenerational trauma, Sahota was probing challenging territory. He was also, it now becomes clear, laying the groundwork for his fourth novel, which leans decisively into exactly this ideological tension.
