THE YEAR OF THE RUNAWAYS
By Sunjeev Sahota
Knopf, 484 pp., $27.95
Once in a while a novel comes along that, because of either serendipity or the prescience of its author, captures the tenor and concerns of an era. One such work is “The Year of the Runaways,’’ Sunjeev Sahota’s heartbreaking novel about three immigrants whose lives intersect when they escape from their native India and come to inhospitable, indifferent England.
There is Avtar, who is so desperate to get to England that he sells a kidney to pay for his trip, only to find that jobs are as scarce in his new home as they were in his old. There is Tochi, who takes flight after witnessing the deaths of his entire family in a kind of caste cleansing, only to be met by the same social prejudices. And there is Randeep, the son of a government worker, whose fall from grace is as sharp as it is sudden.
These three are only some of the wretched of the earth that populate “Runaways.’’ All arrive with the hope of earning enough to support themselves and their families back home. But this modest goal is met with almost insurmountable obstacles — expired visas, confiscated passports, immigration raids, unsavory bosses, and money lenders who cheat and exploit them at every turn. You turn the pages holding your breath, waiting for these characters to simply give up, but, like generations of refugees — most recently the Syrians — knocking on Europe’s door, these characters never quit.
In that sense, “Runaways,’’ which has been short-listed for the Man Booker Prize, feels as representative of our time as “The Grapes of Wrath’’ did of another era. Like that other novel, this is an ethical and angry work, but Sahota’s language is so restrained, so matter-of-fact, that it masks its emotions well. Rather than take us deep into his characters’ psyches, rather than tell us what they are thinking or feeling, Sahota describes the external forces that bat them around. In that sense, the novel feels almost journalistic.
This self-control serves the novel well because any hint of melodrama would have undercut its painful authenticity. The sparseness of the writing, however, makes it easier to admire these characters than to love them.
Perhaps the character to whom we feel closest is the novel’s major female character, Narinder, a devout Sikh woman and British citizen, who, out of guilt and piety, marries Randeep so that he can get a marriage visa.
It is hard to know which sections of the novel arouse greater outrage — the chapters describing the lives of these immigrants, with their horrifyingly cruddy jobs, crowded, unsanitary houses, and desperate privations, or those detailing why they left India in the first place.
Sahota does a good job explaining how the three men’s lives come unglued by either the whims of others or due to age-old bigotries. The most tragic story is that of Tochi, a rickshaw driver from the lower caste whose loved ones are taken from him during a systematic genocide by higher-caste, right-wing Hindus. Even in England, Tochi finds he must hide his caste background, and those who know, like Randeep and his friend Avtar, boys from nominally middle-class Punjabi families, look down on him.
Avtar’s own life in India has been upended after being fired from his modest job as a bus conductor by a boss who then imperially directs him never to lower his head in deference to another man.
Of the trio, Randeep’s roots are the most middle class, but he, too, loses his way after being dismissed from college for making an unwanted sexual advance toward a classmate. Over and over, the novel drives home the message that all it takes is one mistake or a stroke of fate for lives already on the margins to unravel.
American readers may find the novel a little difficult to read at times, both because of its subject matter and its array of Punjabi names and slang. There is much to admire here, though, including the book’s resolutely uncompromising ending, but Sahota’s grim theme, his cold, objective narrative style, and his unhappy characters may leave some readers hungry for a little bit more light and warmth. It is both this novel’s strength and weakness that it doesn’t peddle in cheap hope.
THE YEAR OF THE RUNAWAYS
By Sunjeev Sahota
Knopf, 484 pp., $27.95
Thrity Umrigar is the author of six novels, including “The Story Hour’’ and “The Space Between Us.’’
