Four generations. Three sisters. One impossible choice.

Tricked aboard a boat to East Africa, Pirbhai is only thirteen when he is forced by the British into labouring on the railway. Under sweltering heat, hungry and frightened, he commits a terrible act just to survive.

He will never tell a soul, even when he meets Sonal, a fierce, loving woman with whom he starts a family in Uganda, in hope of a better life. But their granddaughters come of age in a divided nation.

Finally forced to flee, the family scatters across the world. They take with them a steel pot, a handful of photos, and a secret – that one day, will help them find each other again.

A History of Burning is a gorgeous family portrait of love, survival, inheritance – and the eternal search for home.

One family’s search for a better life, for fans of Half of a Yellow Sun, Homegoing and Pachinko

‘A remarkable debut . . . haunting, symphonic’ New York Times

‘Vast and intricate, alight with love and contained fury . . . A book I want to press into readers’ hands and discuss for hours’ Megha Majumdar, author of A BURNING

Shortlisted for the Carol Shields Prize for Fiction and the Amazon Canada First Novel Award

‘A remarkable debut . . . haunting, symphonic’ New York Times

India, 1898. Pirbhai is thirteen when he steps into a dhow on the vague promise of work. The voyage is long. He has no money, no voice, no power — and will make impossible choices in the name of survival.

Sonal is fierce and loving, always willing to fight for what she believes in. When a young man called Pirbhai walks into her father’s shop in Kenya, she knows he is part of her future. Together they set out for a new life in Uganda.

Their granddaughters, three sisters, come of age in a divided nation. Latika falls headlong into the student protest movement. Mayuri’s ambitions will take her far from home. And fearless Kiya will have to carry the weight of her family’s past.

Finally, parents, children and grandchildren will scatter across the world, fleeing the brutality of Idi Amin, forging new paths in London, marching for equality in 1990s Canada, searching for a safe mooring. But under everything lies a secret. And one day, a letter arrives that will fan its embers into a flame.

Read one family’s search for a better life in this immersive, kaleidoscopic debut for fans of Half of a Yellow Sun, Homegoing and Pachinko

‘Vast and intricate, alight with love and contained fury… A book I want to press into readers’ hands and discuss for hours’ Megha Majumdar, author of A BURNING