A British journalist of Indian origin has been chosen as one of the 11 writers “to watch out for” making fictional debuts this year. Thirty-six-year-old Sathnam Sanghera has been shortlisted for his novel Marriage Material.
His first book, The Boy with the Topknot: A Memoir of Love, Secrets and Lies in Wolverhampton, was shortlisted for the 2008 Costa Biography Award and the 2009 PEN/Ackerley Prize. It was named 2009 Mind Book of the Year.
Born to Punjabi parents in West Midlands in 1976, Sanghera, a Cambridge graduate, wrote about his family’s past in his acclaimed memoir — from his father’s harsh life in rural Punjab, to his parent’s early years in England; from his mother’s extraordinary resilience as she brought up a family in a foreign land, to his own happy memories of his childhood.
Sanghera’s novel is part of the Waterstones Eleven, a list of the most promising fiction debuts of the year. “It is in bookshops, the bricks and mortar kind, that new writers are most easily discovered and championed. The Waterstones Eleven puts new writing at the forefront of the literary calendar and it has quickly become a celebration our readers trust,” Waterstones managing director James Daunt said.