Skip to content
The Year of the Runaways (Paperback)
  • The Year of the Runaways (Paperback)
zoom

The Year of the Runaways (Paperback)

(author)
4 Reviews Sign in to write a review
£10.99
Paperback 480 Pages
Published: 28/01/2016
Free UK delivery on orders over £25, otherwise £2.99
  • 5+ in stock

Usually dispatched within 1-2 days

Free UK delivery on orders over £25, otherwise £2.99
  • This item has been added to your basket
Shortlisted for the 2015 Man Booker Prize

The Year of the Runaways tells of the bold dreams and daily struggles of an unlikely family thrown together by circumstance. Thirteen young men live in a house in Sheffield, each in flight from India and in desperate search of a new life. Tarlochan, a former rickshaw driver, will say nothing about his past in Bihar; and Avtar has a secret that binds him to protect the chaotic Randeep. Randeep, in turn, has a visa-wife in a flat on the other side of town: a clever, devout woman whose cupboards are full of her husband's clothes, in case the immigration men surprise her with a call. Sweeping between India and England, and between childhood and the present day, this generous, unforgettable novel is - as with Rohinton Mistry's A Fine Balance - a story of dignity in the face of adversity and the ultimate triumph of the human spirit.

'All you can do is surrender, happily, to its power' - Salman Rushdie

Publisher: Pan Macmillan
ISBN: 9781447241652
Number of pages: 480
Weight: 332 g
Dimensions: 197 x 130 x 30 mm


MEDIA REVIEWS

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. The Year of the Runaways is a brilliant and beautiful novel. - Kamila Shamsie, Guardian

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. - New York Times

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 . . . its lyrical prose and ability to immerse the reader in the experiences of a hidden community in Britain - Emily Dugan, Independent on Sunday

The Grapes of Wrath for the 21st century . . . 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. - Washington Post

Wryly humorous . . . The Year of the Runaways needs no affectations to announce its timeliness. As the sheer number of displaced peoples in Europe threatens to overwhelm any capacity for empathy, Mr. Sahota's superb novel helps to make the reality of migrants a little less unimaginable and a little more human. - Wall Street Journal

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. You cry because of the terribleness of it, but also because you just don't want this book to end. I doubt if I'll read a better novel this year. - Cressida Connolly, Spectator

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

The Year of the Runaways is never explicitly polemical, but is steered instead by humane morality. [. . .] Without flights of fancy, neither sensationalising nor preachy, its greatest asset is that it doesn't oversimplify. [. . .] Thoroughly believable, irresistibly humane and often funny. - Lucy Daniel, Daily Telegraph

Sahota's funny, humane second novel is certainly a book for our times. - Sunday Telegraph

Richly authentic and teeming with incident . . . totally compelling. - John Harding, 'The year's best novels', 2015, Daily Mail

Tolstoy and Steinbeck are not exaggerated comparisons for the sweep and power of Sahota’s second novel about five immigrant men living in England illegally and what they went through to get there - Boston Globe

If you think literature is at its best when it combines the political with the personal, this is the perfect book for you. Sunjeev Sahota humanizes harrowing news headlines in the most intimate way; stories about migrant workers and so-called "Untouchables" are carefully captured with painterly details and empathy . . . an important story about duty and love, beautifully told - NPR

You may also be interested in...

Butter
Added to basket
Paperback
£14.99
The Women
Added to basket
Paperback
£9.99 £4.99
Small Things Like These
Added to basket
The Wizard of the Kremlin
Added to basket
The Cinnamon Bun Book Store
Added to basket
How To Solve Your Own Murder
Added to basket
The List of Suspicious Things
Added to basket
Blue Sisters
Added to basket
Paperback
£9.99 £8.49
Welcome to the Hyunam-dong Bookshop
Added to basket
The Handmaid's Tale
Added to basket
Yellowface
Added to basket
Paperback
£9.99 £8.49
The Bee Sting
Added to basket
Paperback
£9.99 £8.49
Killing Time
Added to basket
Hardback
£10.00
The Devils
Added to basket
Hardback
£25.00
Intermezzo
Added to basket
Hardback
£20.00 £16.99
Glorious Exploits
Added to basket
Paperback
£9.99 £7.99

“Desperate times”

The Year of the Runaways tells of the dreams and struggles of an unlikely family thrown together by circumstance in Sheffield. All from India and in desperate search of a new life. Randeep, has a visa-wife in a flat... More

Paperback edition
Helpful? Upvote 113

“Anticlimactic”

Year of the Runaways is, primarily, the story of how three young men from India make their way to England, how they survive and the different circumstances in which they got there.

The story is split between chapters... More

Hardback edition
Helpful? Upvote 68

“Fascinating (bookseller review) ”

A wonderful in depth and educated view into Indian culture, definitely my favourite parts of this book. No question that this book deserved to be nominated for the Booker prize, however I felt that while I enjoyed... More

Hardback edition
Helpful? Upvote 64

Please sign in to write a review

Your review has been submitted successfully.