The Year of the Runaways by Sunjeev Sahota, book review: A picture of modern immigration

Sunjeev Sahota's first novel received rave reviews and won him the accolade of Granta's Best Young Novelist for 2013.The cover of this new novel carries a recommendation from Salman Rushdie that this is the "real thing... and all you can do is surrender, happily, to its power".



I must confess I found it almost impossible to follow the great man's advice for the first 100 or so pages and not surrender to the urge to abandon the novel. But it was worth persevering for long before the end Sahota proves a wonderfully evocative storyteller, taking us into the heart of the world of illegal migration and how it shapes lives.



The story centres round three young Indian migrants, Tarlochan, Randeep and Avtar, and their interaction with Narinder, the British born daughter of an earlier generation of Indian migrants. Avtar and Randeep, whose families in Amritsar know each other, arrive together. But while their lives show the impact of modern, aspirational India, society has not changed enough for Avtar to tell Randeep that he is the lover of his older sister. With their families on hard times they decide to migrate to Britain to look for work, but in order to gain entry they have to pretend they are not: Avtar posing as a student and Randeep on a "visa marriage" to Narinder. Tarlochan takes the more classic illegal immigrant route of arriving on a fake passport in a torturous journey via Russia and Paris.