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

“I would be lying if I said my mother’s misery has never given me pleasure,” says Antara, Tara’s now-adult daughter.

This is a love story and a story about betrayal–not between lovers but between a mother and a daughter. … In her youth, Tara was wild. She abandoned her arranged marriage to join an ashram, embarked on a stint as a beggar (mostly
to spite her affluent parents), 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, choking cord of memory and myth that binds mother and daughter: Is Tara’s memory loss real? Are Antara’s memories fair? In vivid and visceral prose, Avni
Doshi tells a story at once shocking and empathetic of a mother-daughter relationship and a daughter’s search for self. A journey into shifting memories, altering identities, and the subjective nature of truth, Burnt Sugar is the stunning
and unforgettable debut of a major new voice in contemporary fiction.

SHORTLISTED FOR THE BOOKER PRIZE 2020, AND PUBLISHED IN THE UK AS BURNT SUGAR

Utterly compelling, complex, unflinching realism – sometimes emotionally wrenching but also cathartic, written with poignancy and memorability. – The Booker Prize Judges 2020

Avni Doshi is a writer of surgical precision and sharp intelligence. This novel of mother-and-daughter resentments and the deep, intimate cuts of ancient family history gleams like a blade – both dangerous and beautiful. I loved it. – Elizabeth Gilbert, bestselling author of Eat, Pray, Love

Taut and unsettling, a dark, ferocious novel. – Fatima Bhutto, author of The Runaways

Antara has never understood her mother Tara’s decisions – walking out on her marriage to follow a guru, living on the streets like a beggar, shacking up with an unknown artist, rebelling against society’s expectations … But when Tara starts losing her memory, Antara searches for a way to make peace with their shared past, a past that haunts them both.

As she relives her childhood in Pune in the eighties, the time she spent at a Catholic boarding school in the hills of Maharashtra, and her years as a young artist in Bombay, Antara comes up against her own fears and neuroses, realizing she might not be so different from Tara after all.

Safed Libaas Wali Ladki, the Hindi translation of Girl in White Cotton, is a journey into shifting memories, altering identities, and the subjective nature of truth. Tracing the fragile line between familial devotion and deception, Avni Doshi’s mesmerizing first novel will surprise and unsettle you.