The Year of the Runaways

Sahota is a writer who knows how to turn a phrase, how to light up a scene, how to make you stay up late at night to learn what happens next. The Year of the Runaways is a brilliant and beautiful novelKamila Shamsie, The Guardian

Writing with unsentimental candor, Mr Sahota has created a cast of characters whose lives are so richly imagined that this deeply affecting novel calls out for a sequel or follow-up that might recount the next installment of their livesThe New York Times

An ideal antidote to a year of reductive discussions of immigration, Sunjeev Sahota’s novel takes you deep into the lives of a group of Indian labourers thrown together in Sheffield . . . its lyrical prose and ability to immerse the reader in the experiences of a hidden community in BritainEmily Dugan, The Independent on Sunday

The Grapes of Wrath for the twenty-first century . . . the great marvel of this book is its absolute refusal to grasp at anything larger than the hopes and humiliations of these few marginal peopleThe Washington Post