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.
 
Published 2021
Hardback