Burnt Sugar, Avni Doshi
Burnt Sugar, Avni Doshi
List: $19.99 | Sale: $13.99
Club: $9.99

Burnt Sugar

Author: Avni Doshi

Narrator: Sneha Mathan

Unabridged: 8 hr 35 min

Format: Digital Audiobook Download

Publisher: Recorded Books

Published: 01/26/2021


Synopsis

Shortlisted for the 2020 Booker Prize, a searing literary debut novel set in India about mothers and daughters, obsession and betrayal

“I would be lying if I said 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.

“Avni Doshi is a writer of surgical precision and sharp intelligence. This novel of mother-and-daughter resentments and the deep, intimate cuts of ancient family history gleams like a blade—both dangerous and beautiful. I loved it.”—Elizabeth Gilbert, author of Eat, Pray, Love and Big Magic

About Avni Doshi

Avni Doshi was born in New Jersey. She completed her BA in art history from Barnard College and her MA in the history of art from University College London. Avni has been awarded the Tibor Jones South Asia Prize and a Charles Pick Fellowship. She lives in Dubai.


Reviews

Goodreads review by Candi

“Human degeneration halts and sputters but doesn’t reverse.” I suspect I read this at a bad time - when I’m already fairly disgusted with a large portion of the population; dispirited about the lack of humanity in so many people. This rubbed a bit of salt in the wound. I finished reading it nearly a......more

Goodreads review by emma

bought a book because it was cheap and pretty again... and this time, the expression "don't judge a book by its cover" won. i've read a lot of books exploring the relationship between mother and daughter recently, and i've read a lot of literary fiction that dares to be difficult lately, and the setup......more

Now longlisted for the 2021 Women's Prize. I read the book following its earlier shortlisting for the 2020 Booker Prize and based on that did not feel the book had the coherency to be a worthy Booker winner. Similarly I would not want to see it win the Women's Prize. The whites are still bright, so......more

Goodreads review by Meike

Now Nominated for the Women's Prize for Fiction 2021 Shortlisted for the Booker Prize 2020 Avni Doshi's debut is a feminist novel set in modern-day India that ponders motherhood, memory, and the change of roles from being a daughter to becoming a caregiver for an elderly mother. The main character an......more

Goodreads review by Ilenia

Al centro di "Zucchero bruciato" c'è una relazione carica di energie magmatiche, un topic che non si è ancora esaurito in letteratura: l'"amore molesto", ossessivo, competitivo con la madre, vista come soggetto ambiguo, inconoscibile, al limite del crudele e dell'invidioso. D'altra parte la madre è......more