Year of the Runaways

Sunjeev Sahota is the author of Ours Are the Streets, The Year of the Runaways, China Room and The Spoiled Heart. The Year of the Runaways was shortlisted for the 2015 Booker Prize and the International Dylan Thomas Prize, and won the Encore Prize, the South Bank Sky Arts Award, and the European Union Prize for Literature. China Room was shortlisted for the Rathbones Folio Prize and longlisted for the 2021 Booker Prize, the RSL Ondaatje Prize and the Walter Scott Prize for Historical Fiction. Sahota was chosen as one of the Granta Best of Young British Novelists 2013 and is a fellow of the RSL. He lives in Sheffield and teaches at Durham University.

Told in the most intimate of ways, not theorised but deeply felt ... Sahota is a writer who knows how to turn a phrase, how to light up a scene, how to make you stay up late at night to learn what happens next. This is a novel that takes on the largest questions and still shines in the smallest details. Sahota moves some of the most urgent political questions of the day away from rhetorical posturing and contested statistics and into the realm of humanity. The Year of the Runaways is a brilliant and beautiful novel. -- Kamila Shamsie Guardian Novels of such scope and invention are all too rare; unusual, too, are those of real heart, whose characters you grow to love and truly care for. The Year of the Runaways has it all. The action spans continents, taking in a vast sweep of politics, religion and immigration; it also examines with tenderness and delicacy the ties that bind us, whether to family, friends or fellow travellers. Judges of forthcoming literary prizes need look no further. [...] For sheer emotion and vertigo-inducing anxiety, the [closing] scene ranks with Tess putting the letter under Angel Clare's door, or Omar Sharif catching sight of Julie Christie on a moving bus in the film of Dr Zhivago. You cry because of the terribleness of it, but also because you just don't want this book to end. Sunjeev Sahota is an absolutely wonderful writer. It is amazing that this book, so rich, so absorbing, so deftly executed, should be only his second. I doubt if I'll read a better novel this year. -- Cressida Connolly Spectator An ideal antidote to a year of reductive discussions of immigration, Sunjeev Sahota's novel takes you deep into the lives of a group of Indian labourers thrown together in Sheffield. Deftly shifting in time and place, Sahota builds a portrait of the often painful circumstances that lead these men to abandon life in India for this cold, damp city, in the hope of starting afresh. This is Sahota's second novel. His first, Ours Are the Streets, was an acutely observed story of a young man's shift from ordinary British Pakistani teenager to Muslim radical. The Year of the Runaways is no less accomplished in its lyrical prose and ability to immerse the reader in the experiences of a hidden community in Britain ... It is a testament to Sahota's accomplished characterisation that he maintains sympathy with the men even after they commit crimes and take advantage of others -- Emily Dugan Independent on Sunday This massive book, stuffed with compelling stories, rich in characters and resoundingly authentic in its detailing of life in the harsh underbelly of this country, should be compulsory reading. A magnificent achievement. Daily Mail The Year of the Runaways takes place in a parallel England, a near-invisible world that rarely intersects with our own. It is familiar territory from news reports, but only in outline. Sahota has a lot to say and he says it calmly, with great moral intelligence ... deeply impressive. Sunday Times A wonderfully evocative storyteller. Independent A sensitive and searing novel. -- Marian Ryan Mail on Sunday This is a rich, intricate, beautifully written novel, bursting and seething with energy. The Times Nothing short of an asteroid impact would have made me put the book down Irish Times