The novel is broken into two narrative arcs joined by blood. The major storyline is set in Punjab, 1929. The protagonist is 15-year-old Mehar. Mehar and two other women are all married to three brothers in one single ceremony. The intriguing part is that none of the women know which of the brothers is their husband. Mehar never sees her husband, working in the fields through the day, and at night he remains an elusive silhouette. When she does see him briefly through the day, her veil adds to his concealment. I re-read this book after its longlisting for the 2021 Booker Prize and had similar views to my first read. What was he thinking? Did he think he had made the right decision in coming here ? To this town? To England ? Did he wonder, like I did, like I still do whenever I see my daughter be so casually, so unthinkingly, sidelined in the playground, did he too wonder if these people would ever agree to share ownership of this land ? Did he worry that our lives here would always be seen as fundamentally illegitimate ?

Seale, William (1986). The President's House. Washington, D.C.: White House Historical Association. ISBN 0-912308-28-1. The bulk of the book is the story of Mehar in 1929 Punjab. On her wedding day, she and two other women were married to three brothers. But none of the women knows which brother is her husband and the domineering family matriarch keeps the women separate except when the men visit in darkness attempting to conceive a child, preferably a son. Mehar wants to know which man is her husband and starts to note evidence until she comes to a conclusion. This conclusion sets the main story in this part of the book in motion. Sahota neatly intertwines the threads connecting the past and present, never forcing obvious connections, letting the reader make its mind how the common forces of love and friendship shape the protagonists. He manages to confront heavy themes of arranged marriage and largely gendered injustices through a tragic love story. His prose is delicate, beautiful and his plotting is spectacular, managing to foreshadow the inevitable without lessening the reader's desire to find out what will happen. SAHOTA: No. So the main reason why, in the book, the women are brought into the family is to bear children. And by that, I mean to bear sons. And Mai, the mother-in-law, controls very much when those encounters between husband and wives take place and where they take place as well. So the tap on the shoulder is a way, again, for her to exert her control over all these young lives. essentially a novel of interior life and sensation, plot.... lightly sketched, as with much else in the novel, subtlety.....refuses to let his historical characters act as though they are in a historical novel, dramatically hushed ....SAHOTA: Yeah, very much so - this idea of dramatic truth, this idea of watching people struggle with going through life. So mine enables me to live my own life in a better and more self-aware way, I think. I still to this day derive a great deal of solace and hope from reading novels. It seems to me like reading novels is a perfectly viable way to spend your life, really (laughter). Freidel, Frank Burt; Pencak, William, eds. (1994). The White House: The First Two Hundred Years. Boston: Northeastern University Press. ISBN 1-55553-170-9. China Room really shouldn’t have worked for me — it’s kind of a sentimental historical drama, dripping with desire and forbidden love — but it touched me. I cared about the characters, was fascinated by the customs, and appreciated the long view that author Sunjeev Sahota provides by splitting the storyline between two members of a Punjabi Sikh family, three generations and seventy years apart. This is unlike Sahota’s last Man Booker nominated novel ( The Year of the Runaways, which I loved), and although it feels less deep, it worked for me. Rounding up to four stars. (Note: I read an ARC through NetGalley and passages quoted may not be in their final forms.)

Morris, Edwin Bateman (1952). Report of the Commission on the Renovation of the Executive Mansion. Washington, D.C.: Government Printing Office. OCLC 1386079. Abbott, James Archer (2007). The Presidential Dish: Mrs. Woodrow Wilson and the White House China Room. Woodrow Wilson House; National Trust for Historic Preservation. pp.2–7. OCLC 500849758.

SIMON: And I know it's at the end of the book, but do you mind if we begin by asking about that photo? More in-depth thoughts to follow on https://thereadersroom.org/ where I am serving as a member of a panel (to analyze the Booker Prize). Sahota had not read a novel until he was 18 years old, when he read Salman Rushdie's Midnight's Children while visiting relatives in India before starting university. After Midnight's Children, Sahota went on to read The God of Small Things, A Suitable Boy and The Remains of the Day. In an interview in January 2011, he stated: However in a nutshell, I really loved reading this book. I'm not sure if it is original enough to win a big prize like the Booker, but I love books set in India ( A Fine Balance, Shantaram, The White Tiger to name a few). This is a quieter, character-driven book, focused on emotions, specifically yearning . . .and books like that are my favorite. The writing reminded me a bit of Khaled Hosseini.