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The Spoiled Heart: A Novel Audiobook
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“Will consume any reader who picks it up.”—Ron Charles, The Washington Post
A brilliant and riveting story of ambition, love, family secrets, and unintended consequences, from “bold storyteller” (The New Yorker) and two-time Booker Prize nominee Sunjeev Sahota
Nayan Olak keeps seeing Helen Fletcher around town. She’s returned with her teenage son to live in the run-down house at the end of the lane, and—though she’s strangely guarded—Nayan can’t help but be drawn to her. He hasn’t risked love since losing his young family in a terrible accident twenty years ago.
In the wake of the tragedy, Nayan’s labor union, long a cornerstone of his community, became the center of his life: a way for him to channel his energies into making the world a better—fairer, as he sees it—place. Now he’s decided to mount a run for the leadership. But his campaign pits him against a newcomer, Megha, who quickly proves to be a more formidable challenger than he anticipated.
As Nayan’s differences with Megha spin out of control, complicating the ideals he’s always held dear, he grows closer to Helen—and unknowingly barrels toward long-held secrets about how their pasts might be connected. Suddenly, much more is threatened than his chances of winning.
In one sense a tragedy in the classic mold, tracing one man’s seemingly inexorable fall, The Spoiled Heart is also an explosively contemporary story of how a few words or a single action—to one person careless, to another, charged—can trigger a cascade of unimaginable consequences. A vivid and multilayered exploration of the mysteries of the heart, how community is forged and broken, and the shattering impact of secrets and assumptions alike, it is a blazing achievement from one of Britain’s foremost living writers.
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"Some writers have a gift for making ordinary lives as compelling as anything you’d find in an epic adventure. This ability to chart the human condition goes beyond technical proficiency or what we’d generally consider literary merit. Sunjeev Sahota has this gift. . . . [His] prose is as precise, confident, and startlingly wise when describing the depths of tragedy as the banalities of a transaction in a local shop. . . . The Spoiled Heart is one of those books that will take root quickly and grow in your soul."
— BookPage (starred review)
Quotes
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A thoughtful exploration of race and class tensions in modern-day Britain and of the lingering effects of a long-ago tragedy . . . satisfyingly surprising.
— Kirkus Reviews -
Fearlessly contemporary and flawlessly observed, The Spoiled Heart confirms Sunjeev Sahota's position as one of our essential novelists.
— Karan Mahajan, author of the National Book Award Finalist The Association of Small Bombs -
In this thoughtful, searching excavation of interlocking tragedies and contemporary politics, Sunjeev Sahota offers us a novel at once Shakespearean and thrillingly of our time. The Spoiled Heart hurts to read, but in all the good ways.
— Sarah Thankam Mathews, author of All This Could Be Different -
Sahota delivers a viscerally charged novel . . . [with] plenty of heart and suspense.
— Booklist (starred review) -
"A thoughtful exploration of race and class tensions in modern-day Britain and of the lingering effects of a long-ago tragedy.
— Kirkus Reviews -
In this thoughtful, searching excavation of interlocking tragedies and contemporary politics, Sunjeev Sahota offers us a novel at once Shakespearean and thrillingly of our time. The Spoiled Heart hurts to read, but in all the good ways.
— Sarah Thankam Mathews, author of the National Book Award Finalist All This Could Be Different -
“A beautifully constructed tale . . . Sahota fascinates with his nuanced and multifaceted depictions of race and class, and he weaves in plenty of suspense as the union election unfolds. This is electrifying.
— Publishers Weekly (starred review) -
A thoughtful exploration of race and class tensions in modern-day Britain and of the lingering effects of a long-ago tragedy.
— Kirkus Reviews -
In this thoughtful, searching excavation of interlocking tragedies and contemporary politics, Sunjeev Sahota offers us a novel at once Shakespearean and thrillingly of our time. The Spoiled Heart hurts to read, but in all the good ways.
— Sarah Thankam Mathews, author of the National Book Award Finalist All This Could Be Different -
“A beautifully constructed tale . . . Sahota fascinates with his nuanced and multifaceted depictions of race and class, and he weaves in plenty of suspense as the union election unfolds. [The Spoiled Heart] is electrifying.
— Publishers Weekly (starred review) -
A thoughtful exploration of race and class tensions in modern-day Britain and of the lingering effects of a long-ago tragedy . . . satisfyingly surprising.
— Kirkus Reviews -
Some writers have a gift for making ordinary lives as compelling as anything you’d find in an epic adventure. This ability to chart the human condition goes beyond technical proficiency or what we’d generally consider literary merit. Sunjeev Sahota has this gift . . . [his] prose is as precise, confident and startlingly wise when describing the depths of tragedy as the banalities of a transaction in a local shop . . . The Spoiled Heart is one of those books that will take root quickly and grow in your soul.
— BookPage (starred review) -
A beautifully constructed tale . . . Sahota fascinates with his nuanced and multifaceted depictions of race and class, and he weaves in plenty of suspense as the union election unfolds. [The Spoiled Heart] is electrifying.
— Publishers Weekly (starred review) -
[Sahota] is 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, which balances its various narratives with subtle skill and a page-turning tension.
— The i -
[A] scruffy, passionate novel . . . The Spoiled Heart captures the brute emotional force of DEI-based politics.
— The Wall Street Journal -
“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.
— The New York Times -
[A] scruffy, passionate novel . . . The Spoiled Heart captures the brute emotional force of DEI-based politics.
— The Wall Street Journal -
Me again, banging on about Sunjeev Sahota. I won’t stop until you read him . . . His new book, The Spoiled Heart, finds a timeless imprint in the hot metal of the moment . . . ‘I was always just trying to connect,’ Sajjan tells us — pleads with us — as the novel accelerates toward a series of increasingly shocking revelations. But 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 Washington Post -
Me again, banging on about Sunjeev Sahota. I won’t stop until you read him . . . His new book, The Spoiled Heart, finds a timeless imprint in the hot metal of the moment . . . ‘I was always just trying to connect,’ Sajjan tells us — pleads with us — as the novel accelerates toward a series of increasingly shocking revelations. But 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.
— Ron Charles, The Washington Post -
[A] scruffy, passionate novel . . . The Spoiled Heart captures the brute emotional force of DEI-based politics.
— The Wall Street Journal -
Perfectly true, and perfectly judged . . . every person, however narratively significant, feels intimately alive. His characters don’t just appear, they emerge and grow.
— Sam Byers, The Guardian -
Sahota was named as one of Granta’s Best Young British Novelist in 2013, and The Spoiled Heart shows why. Intellectually ambitious . . . smart and sophisticatedly written.
— Daily Telegraph -
[Sahota] skilfully reframes the arc of one man’s downfall through the slippery new lens of modern identity politics.
— Daily Mail -
The pages fly. It’s gripping . . . irresistible . . . brilliant.
— John Self, The Times -
“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.
— The New York Times -
Me again, banging on about Sunjeev Sahota. I won’t stop until you read him . . . His new book, The Spoiled Heart, finds a timeless imprint in the hot metal of the moment . . . ‘I was always just trying to connect,’ Sajjan tells us — pleads with us — as the novel accelerates toward a series of increasingly shocking revelations. But 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.
— Ron Charles, The Washington Post -
[A] scruffy, passionate novel . . . The Spoiled Heart captures the brute emotional force of DEI-based politics.
— The Wall Street Journal -
Perfectly true, and perfectly judged . . . every person, however narratively significant, feels intimately alive. His characters don’t just appear, they emerge and grow.
— Sam Byers, The Guardian -
Sahota was named as one of Granta’s Best Young British Novelist in 2013, and The Spoiled Heart shows why. Intellectually ambitious . . . smart and sophisticatedly written.
— Daily Telegraph -
[Sahota] skilfully reframes the arc of one man’s downfall through the slippery new lens of modern identity politics.
— Daily Mail -
The pages fly. It’s gripping . . . irresistible . . . brilliant.
— John Self, The Times -
[Sahota] is 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.
— i -
A beautifully constructed tale . . . Sahota fascinates with his nuanced and multifaceted depictions of race and class, and he weaves in plenty of suspense as the union election unfolds. [The Spoiled Heart] is electrifying.
— Publishers Weekly (starred review) -
Sahota delivers a viscerally charged novel . . . [with] plenty of heart and suspense.
— Booklist (starred review) -
Fearlessly contemporary and flawlessly observed, The Spoiled Heart confirms Sunjeev Sahota’s position as one of our essential novelists.
— Karan Mahajan, author of the National Book Award finalist The Association of Small Bombs -
In this thoughtful, searching excavation of interlocking tragedies and contemporary politics, Sunjeev Sahota offers us a novel at once Shakespearean and thrillingly of our time. The Spoiled Heart hurts to read, but in all the good ways.
— Sarah Thankam Mathews, author of the National Book Award finalist All This Could Be Different
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About Sunjeev Sahota
Sunjeev Sahota is the author of Ours Are the Streets and The Year of the Runaways, which was shortlisted for the Man Booker Prize and the Dylan Thomas Prize and was awarded a European Union Prize for Literature. In 2013, he was named one of Granta’s twenty Best of Young British Novelists of the Decade.