Burnt Sugar

âI would be lying if I say my motherâs misery has never given me pleasure," says Antara, Taraâs now-adult daughter.
This is a love story and a story about betrayalânot between lovers but between a mother and a daughter. . . . In her youth, Tara was wild. She abandoned her arranged marriage to join an ashram, embarked on a stint as a beggar (mostly to spite her affluent parents), and spent years chasing a disheveled, homeless âartist,â all with little Antara in tow.
But now Tara is forgetting things, and Antara is an adultâan artist and marriedâand must search for a way to make peace with a past that haunts her as she confronts the task of caring for a woman who never cared for her.
Sharp as a blade and laced with caustic wit, Burnt Sugar unpicks the slippery, choking cord of memory and myth that binds mother and daughter: Is Taraâs memory loss real? Are Antaraâs memories fair? In vivid and visceral prose, Avni Doshi tells a story at once shocking and empathetic of a mother-daughter relationship and a daughterâs search for self. A journey into shifting memories, altering identities, and the subjective nature of truth, Burnt Sugar is the stunning and unforgettable debut of a major new voice in contemporary fiction.