The Year of the Runaways

Sartaj Garewal's reading of this novel about Indian migrant workers in Britain combines the best of both audio and print. Garewal transitions clearly between narrative and dialogue, verbally producing the punctuation that differentiates them and making for minimal replays. At the same time, he brings the words on the page to life--performing rather than simply reading the dialogue, perfecting the various accents of the characters ranging from Indian to Cockney, and even adopting different voices for different characters to fully flesh each one out. This allows the listener to follow along easily, despite the novel's frequent long blocks of dialogue and huge cast of diverse characters. M.F.R. © AudioFile 2016, Portland, Maine

Starred review from January 25, 2016
Lyrical and incisive, Sahota’s Booker-shortlisted novel is a considerable achievement: a restrained, lucid, and heartbreaking exploration of the lives of three young Indian men, and one British-Indian woman, as their paths converge in Sheffield, England, over the course of one perilous year. In India, Avtar Nijjar, unfairly fired from his job as a bus conductor, is engaging in a secret relationship with Lakhpreet Sanghera, the teenage daughter of a neighboring family. When Lakhpreet’s 19-year-old brother, Randeep, is forced to abandon his education, and their government-employee father suffers a mental breakdown, Randeep is sent to England to make enough money to keep the family afloat. Lakhpreet arranges for Avtar to accompany him, although Avtar must sell a kidney and accept a predatory loan to afford a student visa, while Randeep travels on a marriage visa. His bride is the London-born Sikh Narinder Kaur, whose desire to help the desperate Randeep runs counter to her family’s pious religiosity and her impending arranged marriage. Rounding out the cast is the 19-year-old Dalit Tochi Kumar, arriving in England illegally after his entire family is massacred by radical Hindu nationalists. Quarrelling, parting, and finding solace in one another in unexpected ways, Sahota’s characters are wonderfully drawn, and imbued with depth and feeling. Their struggles to survive will remain vividly imprinted on the reader’s mind.

May 30, 2016
Garewal begins the audiobook of Sahota’s Booker-shortlisted novel awkwardly; it sounds as if he’s reading word by word rather than narrating the sentences. As soon as he gets into dialogue, however, he becomes livelier, and his narration takes on an easier, more conversational rhythm and tone. Three Indian men are thrown together in Sheffield, England, where they desperately try to survive and avoid getting deported. Finding jobs to make enough money to live and send to their distraught families is a nightmarish challenge. Tochi, a former rickshaw driver from a low caste, is badly scarred, physically and emotionally. Avtar, a middle-class Punjabi on a student visa, seeks only to sustain himself and his now-impoverished family. Randeep is a “visa husband” who has contracted for a one-year marriage to Narinda, a young woman who only wants to do good deeds despite the family conflicts this engenders. Garewal handles a variety of Indian accents quite handily. A Knopf hardcover.

Starred review from June 15, 2016

Set over the course of a year, Sahota's beautifully written story explores the nuances of immigration through the intertwined stories of three young Indian men and a British Indian woman. Avtar and Randeep are middle-class Indian boys who leave India to seek a better life in the UK. Randeep pays Narinder to be a visa wife so he can immigrate, while Avtar sells a kidney to raise the money to travel to England on a student visa. Once there, they live together with many other men in a dilapidated house in Sheffield. Both have financial responsibilities back in India but find it difficult to make enough money doing less than legal construction work. Tochi also lives in the house. He has lost everyone and came to England illegally. He is Chamar (an Untouchable caste) and has faced, and continues to face, overwhelming prejudice, violence, and poverty. The men share meager meals, desperate conditions, backbreaking work, and isolation. Narinder lives in a separate flat for the year Randeep needs before they can divorce. That's the plan, until it gets complicated. Sartaj Garewal's narration expertly captures the voices and emotions of these characters, enabling the listener to know their motivations, strengths and weaknesses, and hopes and fears, all of which are expressed vividly and poignantly. VERDICT Short-listed for the Man Booker Prize, Sahota's lyrical, thought-provoking work explores an in-the-news topic. Highly recommended. ["A harrowing and moving drama of life on the edge": LJ 1/16 starred review of the Knopf hc.]--Judy Murray, Monroe Cty. Lib. Syst., MI

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