Avni Doshi was born in New Jersey and lives in Dubai. She has a BA in art history from Barnard College in New York and a master’s in history of art from University College London. Her writing has appeared in British Vogue, Granta, and The Sunday Times (London). Her first novel, Burnt Sugar, was originally released in India under the title Girl in White Cotton, where it won the Sushila Devi Award. Upon publication in the UK, Burnt Sugar became a finalist for the Booker Prize. It was also longlisted for the Women’s Prize, became a finalist for the PEN/Hemingway Award, was selected as one of The New York Times Book Review’s 100 Notable Books of the Year, and was named a Book of the Year by The Guardian, The Economist, The Spectator, and NPR. Burnt Sugar has been published in twenty-six languages.
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“The end days of a marriage are the beginning of a new life. In this story of rebirth, each page is sharp, piercing, and totally defiant of the expected. I loved how bracing, unsentimental, and beautifully written it is.” —Douglas Stuart
“The First House dissects the tyranny of family with surgical precision. Doshi is unsparing in her depiction of the delusions of marriage and motherhood, and the novel boils with brutal insight. Doshi is among the finest prose stylists at work today; every page of The First House is exhilarating.” —Katie Kitamura, author of Intimacies and Audition
“Avni Doshi's beguiling second novel would seem to be about marriage and divorce. But The First House is interested in more than the subject of romantic love (and its end), asking questions about what it is to be a good parent and dutiful child, about family bonds and the role of fate in shaping our lives. It’s a dreamy, off-kilter, and beautiful book that delights in resisting its reader's expectations.” —Rumaan Alam, author of Entitlement and Leave the World Behind
“Like Ingmar Bergman's Scenes from a Marriage or Elena Ferrante's Days of Abandonment, Avni Doshi's The First House is at times brutal and harrowing, with sentences and scenes sharpened to a daggerlike point. But it is also lush, filled with symbols and signs and a kind of freedom that comes only through falling apart. I was consumed by this novel, by its movement towards consciousness and great clarity.” —Amina Cain, author of Indelicacy
“The First House reads like something out of mythology. In Avni Doshi's hands, everything becomes laced with a surreal and sinister magic. In measured and clever prose, the narrator unspools all of her relationships, and she knows exactly which loose threads to pull. Her quiet observations about the inner machinations of a family are honest, insightful, spot-on. This is a writer who understands best what tethers us to those we love.” —Katie Yee, author of Maggie; Or, a Man and a Woman Walk Into a Bar
"The First House is an engrossing and affecting account of the end of a marriage. Avni Doshi’s writing is precise and sharp and yet accommodates an eeriness that will surprise the reader. A remarkable, haunting novel." —Deepa Anappara, author of The Last of Earth and Djinn Patrol on the Purple Line
"A blistering tour-de-force of a novel that will tunnel itself into your ribcage and linger for long afterwards. Strange, surreal, uncomfortably all-too-human- The First House cements Avni Doshi as one of the most original and astute writers working today- this story is both contemporary and timeless." —Sharlene Teo, author of Ponti
“A fearless descent into the ruins of a marriage and the self that emerges. Blending myth, astrology, and piercing emotional truth, The First House interrogates motherhood, identity, and what remains when the structure of your life gives way. A novel of rare intelligence and unmistakable force—a masterwork of interior reckoning.” —Chelsea Bieker, bestselling author of Madwoman and Godshot
“Sharp, surreal… promises to leave you somewhere completely different from where it picked you up.” —Lit Hub
“Doshi’s storytelling stands out. Her prose is tooled, dense and alert.” —Daisy Hilyard, The Guardian
“Vivid and vigorous, precise and unsparingly truthful . . . Once again Avni Doshi gives us a woman on the edge and a dreadful sense of the horror that lies, not entirely dormant, in the domestic.” —Financial Times
Praise for Burnt Sugar:
“Avni Doshi isn’t just a talented writer, she is an artist…. Doshi’s sentences are sharply drawn and devastatingly precise. There is never a wasted word, no debris, no flourish to hide behind. A voice this unadorned, and blunt, is so hauntingly stubborn and original, you want to hear from it again and again.” —New York Times Book Review
“Burnt Sugar is a work of extraordinary insight, courage and sophistication… It’s not that Doshi has written something no one has ever thought before; it’s that she’s written something no one has ever expressed so exquisitely…..” —The Washington Post
“I read Burnt Sugar with awe, fury and compassion, electrified by the question of whether time does heal all wounds, and whether it even should.” —Catherine Whelan, NPR Morning Edition
“Avni Doshi is a writer of surgical precision and sharp intelligence. This novel of mother-and-daughter resentments and the deep, intimate cuts of ancient family history gleams like a blade—both dangerous and beautiful. I loved it.” —Elizabeth Gilbert, author of Eat, Pray, Love and City of Girls
“Burnt Sugar is absolutely exquisite.” —Diksha Basu, author of Destination Wedding
“Impressively assured.” —The San Francisco Chronicle
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