Book Reviews
[P]owerful.... Mr. Sahota creates an ensemble portrait of young immigrants struggling to find work, to sort out their love lives, to come to terms with duty and tradition and their own confused ambitions.... Mr. Sahota…has an instinctive sense of storytelling, immersing us in the dilemmas of his characters.... Writing with unsentimental candor, Mr. Sahota has created a cast of characters whose lives are so richly imagined that this deeply affecting novel calls out for a sequel or follow-up that might recount the next installment of their lives…At the same time, he's written a novel that captures the plight of many immigrants, who count themselves lucky enough to have made it to the land of their dreams, only to worry that those dreams may be slipping out of reach.
New York Times - Michiko Kakutani
Granta magazine tapped Sunjeev Sahota as one of the 20 best young writers of the decade, and his new novel, The Year of the Runaways, was shortlisted for last year's Booker Prize, and yet it's only now reaching the United States. That seems like an intolerable delay for such a celebrated book, but America's fresh spasm of xenophobia makes this devastating story about the plight of immigrants all the more relevant now...Relentless.... Absorbing.... The great marvel of this book is its absolute refusal to grasp at anything larger than the hopes and humiliations of these few marginal people.... The story's momentum feels absolutely overwhelming.... Read this novel.
Ron Charles - Washington Post
A brilliant political novel, deeply felt, told in the most intimate of ways...Sahota knows how to turn a phrase, how to light up a scene, how to make you stay up late to learn what happens next. This is a novel that takes on the largest questions and still shines in its smallest details...a brilliant and beautiful novel.
Kamila Shamsie - Guardian
A novel of great moral intelligence...deeply impressive.
Claire Lowdon - Sunday Times
Sahota proves a wonderfully evocative storyteller...fascinating...the real thing.
Mihir Bose - Independent
Should be compulsory reading. A magnificent achievement.
John Harding - Daily Mail
The best novel of the year....judges of forthcoming literary prizes need look no further.
Cressida Connolly - Spectator
A rich, intricate, beautifully written novel, bursting and seething with energy.
Kate Saunders - London Times
Nothing short of an asteroid impact would have made me put the book down.
Irish Times
(Starred review.) Lyrical and incisive...a considerable achievement: [an]...exploration of the lives of three young Indian men, and one British-Indian woman, as their paths converge in Sheffield, England.... Sahota’s characters are wonderfully drawn, and imbued with depth and feeling. Their struggles to survive will remain vividly imprinted on the reader’s mind.
Publishers Weekly
(Starred review.) This intense and dramatically realistic novel...delves into the illegal immigrant situation in contemporary England.... Sahota depicts the culture, language, and mentality of Britain's Indian immigrant community from deep within. A harrowing and moving drama of life on the edge. —James Coan, SUNY at Oneonta Lib.
Library Journal
[A]s Sahota demonstrates...every immigrant story is wholly individual, no matter how familiar it feels.... [His] observations of our broken social system are razor-sharp. When the place you've left is burning and the one you're in doesn't want you, how do you find your way home?
Kirkus Reviews