BURNT SUGAR

Shortlisted for the 2020 Booker Prize

Longlisted for the 2021 Womens Prize

Shortlisted for the 2022 Pen/hemingway award

PICKED AS A BOOK OF THE YEAR 2020 BY the Guardian, Economist, Spectator, NPR and more...

This is a love story and 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 cords of memory and myth that bind two women together, and hold them apart. It was released in India under the title Girl in White Cotton, and is being published in more than 25 languages.

“Avni Doshi isn’t just a talented writer, she is an artist. She knows the difference between a line and shade — both start the same way, but intention and style inform their difference. Doshi’s sentences are sharply drawn and devastatingly precise. There is never a wasted word, no debris, no flourish to hide behind. A voice this unadorned, and blunt, is so hauntingly stubborn and original, you want to hear from it again and again.” The New York Times

“Burnt Sugar is a work of extraordinary insight, courage and sophistication.” The Washington Post

"Doshi’s portrayal of troubled mother-daughter intimacy is viscerally poetic. This has the heft and expansiveness of a classic 19th-century novel." Publishers Weekly Starred Review

"A daring, excellent first novel." LitHub

“A landmark portrait of toxic parenting and its tangled aftermath.” Kirkus Starred Review

"Burnt Sugar is an extraordinary confection, fearless and scathing, painfully exhilarating. This is an exquisitely written novel, come for the effortlessly stylish writing, stay for the boiling wrath." Observer

“Burnt Sugar is an unsettling, sinewy debut, startling in its venom and disarming in its humour from the very first sentence.” Guardian

“A powerful and unusual debut novel with sharp, spare writing.” Goop

“Avni Doshi is a writer of surgical precision and sharp intelligence. This novel of mother-and-daughter resentments and the deep, intimate cuts of ancient family history gleams like a blade — both dangerous and beautiful. I loved it.” Elizabeth Gilbert, bestselling author of Eat, Pray, Love

‘‘Utterly compelling.” Booker Prize 2020 Judges

"Doshi’s visceral debut is a no-holds-barred excavation of how hate can both poison and sustain.” Daily Mail

"Doshi’s lashing, acerbic prose is as equally full of hand-whipped tension as dalgona coffee; through the tense narrative, she excavates devastating observations about scorched family ties." Electric Literature 

"Horror stories from the past seep into the present, as Doshi builds her portrait of a fractured mother-daughter relationship… Doshi’s prose is arresting and her ideas fiercely intelligent." Sunday Times

"Precisely written… this is a compelling book, often beautifully written and with startling imagery, emotionally wrenching and poignant in equal measure." Sameer Rahim, 2020 Booker Prize judge

"This is an intelligent debut, deserving of its Booker shortlisting. Burnt Sugar is sorrowful, sceptical and electrifyingly truthful about mothers and daughters." Guardian

"This is not a book to be missed at any cost. The Booker may have eluded Doshi this time, but it is certainly waiting for her down the line, given the electrifying quality of her writing." Hindustan Times