AUTHOR : Sonal Kohli

GENRE :FICTION (DEBUT)

QUICK TAKE:

‘Sharply perceived, evocatively written, brilliantly minimalistic, the stories in The House Next to the Factory announce the arrival of a major new literary talent. This is a book about Delhi, a Delhi that many of us know well: of unexciting daily lives, of middle-class aspirations, and of sweeping change'

SYNOPSIS:

Set largely in Delhi between 1980 and 2010, the nine interlinked stories in The House Next to the Factory follow Kavya and her post-Partition immigrant family, their servants, tutors, cousins and lovers, their loneliness, aspirations and small-scale ambitions.

Life in the house is humdrum and confining, but on a rare evening Kavya sets out in search of a nun; a beloved teacher is caught in the aftermath of the anti-Sikh riots; in England, an aunt reads William Trevor and pines for all that she has left behind; the family’s steel utensil business blossoms, and amid the clanging of metal and the churning of machines, the household transitions from bourgeois to elite. Yet at thirty, Kavya finds herself in Paris, hoping to get past the sorrows of her young life…

Delicate and finely textured, Sonal Kohli’s extraordinary debut lays bare the complexities of class and culture, even as it evokes the loves and triumphs, the pull of incongruous desires and the tragedies of everyday life.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR:

Sonal Kohli grew up in Delhi and now lives in Washington, D.C. She earned an MA in Creative Writing from the University of East Anglia, UK and holds a BA in Economics from Shri Ram College of Commerce, Delhi University. She has received fellowships from the Virginia Center for the Creative Arts and Sangam House.

Her stories have appeared in Blackbird, Monkeybicycle, The Caravan, Unthology 7 and elsewhere, and have been shortlisted for the Bristol Short Story Prize 2019 and the Fish Short Story Prize 2014. This is her first book.

PRE-ORDER: This book will be released ~ 1st September

BINDING: Hardback

PAGES: 196

The House next to the Factory by Sonal Kohli