The Year of the Runaways

Garewal begins the audiobook of Sahota’s Booker-shortlisted novel awkwardly; it sounds as if he’s reading word by word rather than narrating the sentences. As soon as he gets into dialogue, however, he becomes livelier, and his narration takes on an easier, more conversational rhythm and tone. Three Indian men are thrown together in Sheffield, England, where they desperately try to survive and avoid getting deported. Finding jobs to make enough money to live and send to their distraught families is a nightmarish challenge. Tochi, a former rickshaw driver from a low caste, is badly scarred, physically and emotionally. Avtar, a middle-class Punjabi on a student visa, seeks only to sustain himself and his now-impoverished family. Randeep is a “visa husband” who has contracted for a one-year marriage to Narinda, a young woman who only wants to do good deeds despite the family conflicts this engenders. Garewal handles a variety of Indian accents quite handily. [em]A Knopf hardcover. (Mar.) [/em]