Burnt Sugar

By Avni Doshi

Book Overview

Shortlisted for the 2020 Booker Prize, Avni Doshi's Burnt Sugar is a searing literary debut novel set in India about mothers and daughters, obsession and betrayal.

"I would be lying if I say my mother's misery has never given me pleasure," says Antara, Tara's now-adult daughter.

This is a love story and a story about betrayal--not between lovers but between a mother and a daughter. . . . In her youth, Tara was wild. She abandoned her arranged marriage to join an ashram, embarked on a stint as a beggar (mostly to spite her affluent parents), and spent years chasing a disheveled, homeless "artist," all with little Antara in tow.

But now Tara is forgetting things, and Antara is an adult--an artist and married--and must search for a way to make peace with a past that haunts her as she confronts the task of caring for a woman who never cared for her.

Sharp as a blade and laced with caustic wit, Burnt Sugar unpicks the slippery, choking cord of memory and myth that binds mother and daughter: Is Tara's memory loss real? Are Antara's memories fair? In vivid and visceral prose, Avni Doshi tells a story at once shocking and empathetic of a mother-daughter relationship and a daughter's search for self. A journey into shifting memories, altering identities, and the subjective nature of truth, Burnt Sugar is the stunning and unforgettable debut of a major new voice in contemporary fiction.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 1419752936
• ISBN13: 9781419752933
• Release Date: March 2022
• Publisher: Overlook Press
• Length: 240 Pages
• Weight: 0.76 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.8" x 5.5" x 8.2"