Avni Doshi

Burnt Sugar

A Novel

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

This is a love story and a story about betrayal—not between lovers but between a mother and a daughter. In her youth, Tara abandoned her arranged marriage to join an ashram, embarked on a stint as a beggar, 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 cord of memory and myth that binds mother and daughter. Avni Doshi tells a story at once shocking and empathetic about shifting memories, altering identities, and the subjective nature of truth.