Burnt Sugar

An unsettling, sinewy debut, startling in its venom and disarming in its humour from the very first sentence – Elle Hunt * Guardian *Extraordinary. Exquisitely written, painfully exhilarating, impossible to put down… An elegant family story that sizzles with hatred… Come for the effortlessly stylish writing, stay for the boiling wrath * Observer *Arresting and fiercely intelligent, disarmingly witty and frank… Horror stories from the past seep into the present, as Doshi builds her portrait of a fractured mother-daughter relationship * Sunday Times *A masterclass. Crisp, engaging, perfectly tragic in the way that families often tend to be… Doshi writes sharply, in no-nonsense prose, not a single sentence in the book can be omitted… Avni Doshi is a force to watch out for in the literary world * Scroll *A corrosive, compulsive debut * Sunday Telegraph (five stars) *Subtle, intelligent, thrilling, visceral – Rhiannon Lucy Cosslett * Guardian *This caustic tale of a destructive mother-daughter bond is as potent as its title might suggest… It bristles with sharp, chilly aphorisms… Doshi’s visceral debut is a no-holds-barred excavation of how hate can both poison and sustain * Daily Mail *Scouringly brilliant, a blazing debut that sticks in the mind like caramel blackened to the bottom of a pan… Doshi draws our relationships, both with the truth and with other people, with words that glitter sharp as shards of broken mirror * Buro. *When does self-determination become selfishness? What can you learn from a bad mother? …Sorrowful, sceptical and electrifyingly truthful about mothers and daughters – Shahidha Bari * Guardian *A sly, slippery, often heartbreaking novel about the role memory plays within families * Stylist *

Avni Doshi was born in New Jersey in 1982 and is currently based in Dubai. She won the Tibor Jones South Asia Prize in 2013 and a Charles Pick Fellowship at the University of East Anglia in 2014. Her debut novel, Burnt Sugar, was shortlisted for the Booker Prize 2020. The novel is published in India as Girl in White Cotton, where it won the Sushila Devi Award 2021.

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