- Book Recommendations
Top 4 Book Recommendations See All
- Extracts
Top 5 Extracts See All
- Author Speak
Top 5 Interviews See All
- Children & YA
Top 4 Childrens Books See All
- Quizzes
Top 4 Quizzes See All
- Asides
Top 4 Asides See All
- Press Room
Top 4 Press Room See All
- Videos
- Home
- Blog
- Announcements
- HarperCollins is delighted to announce an evocative, brilliant work of fiction by a major new literary talent The House Next to the Factory By Sonal Kohli Publishing from Fourth Estate in August 2021
The House Next to the Factory follows Kavya and her post-Partition immigrant family, their servants, tutors, cousins and lovers, their loneliness, aspirations, and small-scale ambitions. The family owns a steel utensil factory and for many years resides within the factory precincts in one of Delhi’s drab industrial areas. Life is humdrum, confining. Kavya plays table tennis against the veranda wall or embroiders with her grandmother; the clanging of metal and the churning of machines mix with household sounds.
Set between 1980 and 2010, the nine interwoven stories span thirty years, as Nehruvian socialism gives way to material desires and the free market revolution. Kavya’s family accrues wealth and transitions from provincial bourgeois to elite. Life passes and begins again. At 30, Kavya finds herself in Paris, hoping to leave behind in her apartment at Rue Saint Jacques the sorrows of her young life. The House Next to the Factory reveals the complexities of class and culture, even as it describes the loves, triumphs, the pull of incongruous desires and tragedies of everyday life.
‘Sharply perceived, evocatively written, brilliantly minimalistic, the stories in The House Next to the Factory announce the arrival of a major new literary talent. This is a book about Delhi, a Delhi that many of us know well: of unexciting daily lives, of middle-class aspirations, and of sweeping change. Yet it is a Delhi we have seldom encountered in fiction, and The House Next to the Factory represents the lives of its characters so unforgettably that once we have read these stories, we will perhaps never be able to walk the streets of the great city without calling them to mind. Sonal Kohli’s stories reminded me of Daniyal Mueenuddin’s In Other Rooms, Other Wonders; the interconnected narratives keep reprising in my head months after I first read them. We at HarperCollins India are so excited to be publishing this wonderful debut work of fiction under our prestigious Fourth Estate imprint this August.’
– Udayan Mitra, Publisher – Literary, HarperCollins India
‘The House Next to the Factory has been a remarkable journey for me, both personal and literal. I wrote it over the last decade at various desks in three continents, five countries and numerous cities. The stories kept presenting themselves to me, and I kept working on them. I’m very excited to debut with HarperCollins India. I have never waited for August more.’
– Sonal Kohli, Author
‘As an editor, you end up reading through a text multiple times, over its many drafts and revisions – it can be an exhausting process. But it is exceedingly rare that you find yourself liking a work more and more over these various readings, which was my experience with Sonal Kohli’s debut, The House Next to the Factory. These are gentle, unshowy, but richly textured stories of great accomplishment and quiet power. It is an absolute privilege to be able to publish them, and I’m certain that this is a work – and an author – we will be hearing a great deal about in the coming months and years.’
– Rahul Soni, Executive Editor – Literary, HarperCollins India
About the Author
Sonal Kohli grew up in Delhi and now lives in Washington, D.C. She earned an MA in Creative Writing from the University of East Anglia, UK and holds a BA in Economics from Shri Ram College of Commerce at Delhi University. She has received fellowships from the Virginia Center for the Creative Arts and Sangam House. Her stories have appeared in Blackbird, Monkeybicycle, The Caravan, Unthology 7 and elsewhere, and have been shortlisted for the Bristol Short Story Prize 2019 and the Fish Short Story Prize 2014.
About HarperCollins Publishers India
HarperCollins Publishers India is a subsidiary of HarperCollins Publishers. HarperCollins India publishes some of the finest writers from the Indian Subcontinent and around the world, publishing approximately 200 new books every year, with a print and digital catalogue of more than 2,000 titles across 10 imprints. Its authors have won almost every major literary award including the Man Booker Prize, JCB Prize, DSC Prize, New India Foundation Award, Atta Galatta Prize, Shakti Bhatt Prize, Gourmand Cookbook Award, Publishing Next Award, Tata Literature Live Award, Gaja Capital Business Book Prize, BICW Award, Sushila Devi Award, Prabha Khaitan Woman’s Voice Award, Sahitya Akademi Award and the Crossword Book Award. HarperCollins India has been awarded the Publisher of the Year Award three times: at Publishing Next in 2015, and at Tata Literature Live! in 2016 and 2018.HarperCollins India also represents some of the finest publishers in the world including Egmont, Oneworld, Harvard University Press, Bonnier Zaffre, Usborne, Dover and Lonely Planet.
For more information please write to
Your favourite literary newsletter just got a makeover!
New Releases • Author Speak • Events & Festivals Recommendations • First Look • After School Tales Press Room • Pre Orders • Coming Soon • Special Offers Trending • Just In • Also Read • And much more...
Deprecated: File Theme without comments.php is deprecated since version 3.0.0 with no alternative available. Please include a comments.php template in your theme. in /var/www/html/harper_staging/wp-includes/functions.php on line 6085
1 Comments
Top 1 Comments
Oscar Speyrer | 03.12.2022
Exactly where have you ever found the resource meant for that post? Amazing reading I have subscribed for your blog feed.
Warning: Undefined variable $aria_req in /var/www/html/harper_staging/wp-content/themes/harpercollins/comments.php on line 67
Warning: Undefined variable $aria_req in /var/www/html/harper_staging/wp-content/themes/harpercollins/comments.php on line 68