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The Spoiled Heart

A breathtaking novel of love and politics, with a deeply moving family mystery at its heart

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The Spoiled Heart

Written by: Sunjeev Sahota
Narrated by: Esh Alladi
Free with 30-day trial

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Brought to you by Penguin.

In one night, Nayan lost everything. Years later, his world is at risk again.

Nayan has fought hard to move on, losing himself in his political work, trying to make a better world. A fresh challenge arrives with newcomer Megha, who threatens not just his career ambitions, but his ideals.

Meanwhile the enigmatic Helen Fletcher returns to Chesterfield and Nayan finds himself growing close to her. But Helen carries secrets which connect her to Nayan in ways he doesn’t realise.

The Spoiled Heart is an explosive story of how a few words or a single action – to one person careless, to another, charged – can trigger a cascade of unimaginable consequences.

’One of Britain’s finest writers…page-turning’ Observer

‘Withheld revelations and dark secrets...plot-packed, propulsive’ New York Times

‘Gripping...irresistible...brilliant’ The Times

'Utterly compelling, original and very moving' Tessa Hadley

‘Moving and revelatory’ Financial Times

‘Smart and sophisticatedly written’ Daily Telegraph

‘Perfectly paced…gripping’ Guardian

©2024 Sunjeev Sahota (P)2024 Penguin Audio

 Genre Fiction Historical Literary Fiction Mystery Political World Literature
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Critic Reviews

One of Britain’s finest writers...page-turning drama
A smart and sophisticatedly written novel
An enormously sensitive novelist who works assiduously to shed light on life as it is lived, his characters always tangibly real, and fully three-dimensional. The Spoiled Heart balances its various narratives with subtle skill and a page-turning tension. Engrossing
Reads like several books in one... The pages fly. If it doesn’t get Sahota on the Booker longlist again, I’ll be very disappointed
Perfectly paced…[and] gripping… Sahota builds a forceful portrait of collective moral failure and responsibility… The Spoiled Heart feels genuinely, uncomfortably contemporary – a novel at once unafraid of judgment and admirably concerned about its consequences
Sahota has a surgeon’s dexterous hands, and the reader senses his confidence . . . a plot-packed, propulsive story . . . There is an easeful precision to Sahota’s prose reminiscent of Kamila Shamsie and Jhumpa Lahiri, a painful irony that evokes Percival Everett, and a grand human downfall alongside a battle of ideas that is Ibsenesque
Incisive and poignant, his [Sahota’s] fourth novel cuts to the merciless core of the culture wars, engaging with issues of loyalty, identity, inequality and community, and tracing the unforeseen consequences of actions that ripple through the years
The Spoiled Heart finds a timeless imprint in the hot metal of the moment… a tragedy like Fitzgerald’s The Great Gatsby that has taken root in the mind of a haunted onlooker. How much can really ever be known or should be? That’s the paradox this brilliant novel wrestles with and one that will consume any reader who picks it up
The Spoiled Heart is not just cleverly structured…but executed with rare literary intelligence
What lifts this tightly patterned novel…is Sahota’s remarkable skill in characterisation. Every person…feels intimately alive.... His characters don’t just appear, they emerge and grow, revealing of themselves a little more in every finely judged interaction (Sam Byers)
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