Burnt sugar - - WOMEN''S PRIZE FOR FICTION LONGLIST 2021

A searing debut novel about mothers and daughters, obsession and betrayal ' Poignant and economical, this intergenerational story speaks of motherhood and memory, love and the language for it, trauma and truth-searching' Vogue India 'Crystalline and almost surgical, a compulsively readable examination of toxic relationships and the ties that bind us' Sharlene Teo, author of Ponti In her youth, Tara was wild. She abandoned her loveless marriage to join an ashram, endured a brief stint as a beggar (mostly to spite her affluent parents), and spent years chasing after a dishevelled, homeless 'artist' - all with her young child in tow. Now she is forgetting things, mixing up her maid's wages and leaving the gas on all night, and her grown-up daughter is faced with the task of caring for a woman who never cared for her. This is a love story and it is a story about betrayal. But not between lovers - between mother and daughter. Sharp as a blade and laced with caustic wit, Burnt Sugar unpicks the slippery, choking cord of memory and myth that binds two women together, making and unmaking them endlessly.