The Spoiled Heart - Softcover

Sahota, Sunjeev

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0593656008 ISBN 13: 9780593656006

Publisher: Penguin Books, 2025

Synopsis

"Will consume any reader who picks it up."--Ron Charles, The Washington Post

A brilliant and riveting story of ambition, love, family secrets, and unintended consequences, from "bold storyteller" (The New Yorker) and two-time Booker Prize nominee Sunjeev Sahota

Nayan Olak keeps seeing Helen Fletcher around town. She's returned with her teenage son to live in the run-down house at the end of the lane, and--though she's strangely guarded--Nayan can't help but be drawn to her. He hasn't risked love since losing his young family in a terrible accident twenty years ago.

In the wake of the tragedy, Nayan's labor union, long a cornerstone of his community, became the center of his life: a way for him to channel his energies into making the world a better--fairer, as he sees it--place. Now he's decided to mount a run for the leadership. But his campaign pits him against a newcomer, Megha, who quickly proves to be a more formidable challenger than he anticipated.

As Nayan's differences with Megha spin out of control, complicating the ideals he's always held dear, he grows closer to Helen--and unknowingly barrels toward long-held secrets about how their pasts might be connected. Suddenly, much more is threatened than his chances of winning.

In one sense a tragedy in the classic mold, tracing one man's seemingly inexorable fall, The Spoiled Heart is also an explosively contemporary story of how a few words or a single action--to one person careless, to another, charged--can trigger a cascade of unimaginable consequences. A vivid and multilayered exploration of the mysteries of the heart, how community is forged and broken, and the shattering impact of secrets and assumptions alike, it is a blazing achievement from one of Britain's foremost living writers.

About this title

About the Author

Sunjeev Sahota is the author of China Room, which was longlisted for the Booker Prize and was a finalist for the Andrew Carnegie Medal; The Year of the Runaways, which was shortlisted for the Booker Prize and the Dylan Thomas Prize and was awarded a European Union Prize for Literature; and Ours Are the Streets. He lives in Sheffield, England, with his family.

Edition details

• Publisher: Penguin Books
• Publication date: 2025
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0593656008
• ISBN 13: 9780593656006
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 336