Hamish Hamilton have acquired Avni Doshi’s debut novel Burnt Sugar (titled Girl in White Cotton in India): a searing debut novel about obsession, betrayal and the ties that bind.
Out now in India with Fourth Estate/HarperCollins India, titled Girl in White Cotton, the novel will be reaching even more English-speaking readers worldwide with Hamish Hamilton as Burnt Sugar in July 2020.
Hermione Thompson at Hamish Hamilton says: ‘From the brutal first sentence, Avni’s writing held me fast on its gleaming hook. Disquieting and surgically precise, Burnt Sugar is a nuanced indictment (or possibly a painful acquittal) of the human heart, in all its ambivalence and multiplicity.
In her youth, Tara abandoned her loveless marriage to join an ashram, endured a brief stint as a beggar (mostly to spite her affluent parents), and spent years chasing after a dishevelled, homeless ‘artist’ – all with her young child in tow. Now she is forgetting things, mixing up her maid’s wages and leaving the gas on all night, and her grown-up daughter is faced with the task of caring for a woman who never cared for her. Sharp as a blade and laced with caustic wit, Burnt Sugar is a novel about mothers and daughters, memory and self-mythology, but most of all it is a story of betrayal.
The novel has already been making a splash in the press, with Vogue India adding it to their list of must-reads by first-time Indian authors, and Bazaar India featuring the book in their most-anticipated list. Burnt Sugar has also been hailing great reviews:
“A compulsively readable examination of toxic relationships and the ties that bind and stifle us. Avni Doshi is a polished, lyrical talent who has invoked a furious fever dream written with crystalline, almost surgical precision.” Sharlene Teo, author of Ponti
“A courageously engaging novel written in spare, gleaming sentences. It made me hold my breath and gather it up again.” Tishani Doshi
For more information, please contact Maria Cardona.