Western Lane

A deeply moving exploration of an immigrant father's attempts to raise his family as a single parent, while consumed by his own grief and loss and struggling to recognize those of his children too.

Shortlisted for the Booker Prize 2023. The International Bestseller. A beautiful and moving novel about grief, sisterhood and a teenage girl''s struggle to transcend herself. With this gorgeous debut, Maroo blows most of the competition off the court.'' - The Times Eleven-year-old Gopi has been playing squash since she was old enough to hold a racket. When her mother dies, her father enlists her in a quietly brutal training regimen, and the game becomes her world. Slowly, she grows apart from her sisters. Her life is reduced to the sport, guided by its rhythms: the serve, the volley, the drive, the shot and its echo. But on the court, she is not alone. She is with her pa. She is with Ged, a thirteen-year-old boy with his own formidable talent. She is with the players who have come before her. She is in awe. An indelible coming-of-age story, Chetna Maroo''s first novel captures the ordinary and annihilates it with beauty. Western Lane is a valentine to innocence, to the closeness of sisterhood, to the strange ways we come to know ourselves and each other. ''WOW. Western Lane is glorious. You''ll want to read it over and over again.'' - Aravind Adiga, author of The White Tiger ''Feels like the work of a writer who knows what they want to do, and who has the rare ability to do it.'' - The Guardian

Autorentext

Chetna Maroo's stories have been published in The Paris Review, The Stinging Fly and The Dublin Review and she was the recipient of the 2022 Plimpton Prize for Fiction. She lives in London. Western Lane is her first novel.

Klappentext

*'A beautiful and evocative novel about grief, about growing up, about losing and winning. The people and places in this book will stay with me for a long time.' - Sally Rooney, author of Normal People*

A Times Best Paperback of the Year
Shortlisted for the Booker Prize
Longlisted for the Women's Prize for Fiction
Longlisted for the William Hill Award
A BBC Arts & The Reading Agency's Big Sporting Read selection
Selected by Dua Lipa as one of Service95's 'Books of the Year'

A deeply moving novel about grief, sisterhood and a teenage girl's struggle to transcend herself.**

Eleven-year-old Gopi has been playing squash since she was old enough to hold a racket. When her mother dies, her father enlists her in a quietly brutal training regimen, and the game becomes her world. Slowly, she grows apart from her sisters. Her life is reduced to the sport, guided by its rhythms: the serve, the volley, the drive, the shot and its echo.

But on the court, she is not alone. She is with her pa. She is with Ged, a thirteen-year-old boy with his own formidable talent. She is with the players who have come before her. She is in awe.

*An unforgettable coming-of-age story, Chetna Maroo's Western Lane* is an exploration of the closeness of sisterhood, the immigrant experience, and the collective overcoming of grief.

A 'Book of the Year' in The Economist, The Independent, The Week, The New York Times and The Guardian**

*'With this gorgeous debut, Maroo blows most of the competition off the court.' - The Times*

'Stunning . . . Spare, tender, brilliantly achieved' - The Guardian**

Zusammenfassung
A deeply moving exploration of an immigrant father's attempts to raise his family as a single parent, while consumed by his own grief and loss and struggling to recognize those of his children too.