Amazing news to report for Chetna Maroo; her debut novel, Western Lane, published in May this year, has been longlisted for the UK’s most prestigious literary award, the Booker Prize!
The Booker judges say: ‘Skilfully deploying the sport of squash as both context and metaphor, Western Lane is a deeply evocative debut about a family grappling with grief, conveyed through crystalline language which reverberates like the sound “of a ball hit clean and hard…with a close echo”’
The novel has been receiving great reviews: ‘Terrific . . . Slim, subtle, moving . . . a bold book and a quietly brilliant one’ (The Economist); ‘Few novelists write this simply and richly. With this gorgeous debut, Maroo blows most of the competition off the court.’ (The Times); ‘The beauty of Maroo’s novel lies in [its] unfolding, the narrative shaped as much by what is on the page as by what’s left unsaid.’ (The New York Times).
Massive congratulations to Chetna. We will be keeping fingers crossed for the Booker shortlist announcement but this amazing achievement will ensure her brilliant storytelling talent will reach so many more readers.
Chetna Maroo won 2nd prize in the 2017 Bristol Short Story Prize with her story, Wealth of Nations. It is published in our Volume 10 anthology by Tangent Books: https://www.tangentbooks.co.uk/shop/bristol-short-story-prize-volume-10