Western Lane - Paperback

by Chetna Maroo (Author)

Shortlisted for the Booker Prize
Longlisted for the Women's Prize for Fiction
A New York Times Notable Book of the Year
Named a Best Book of the Year by The Guardian, NPR, and Kirkus

A taut, enthralling first novel about grief, sisterhood, and a young athlete's struggle to transcend herself.

Eleven-year-old Gopi has been playing squash since she was old enough to hold a racket. When her mother dies, her father enlists her in a quietly brutal training regimen, and the game becomes her world. Slowly, she grows apart from her sisters. Her life is reduced to the sport, guided by its rhythms: the serve, the volley, the drive, the shot and its echo.

But on the court, she is not alone. She is with her pa. She is with Ged, a thirteen-year-old boy with his own formidable talent. She is with the players who have come before her. She is in awe.

An indelible coming-of-age story, Chetna Maroo's first novel captures the ordinary and annihilates it with beauty. Western Lane is a valentine to innocence, to the closeness of sisterhood, to the strange ways we come to know ourselves and each other.

Author Biography

Chetna Maroo lives in London. Her stories have been published in The Paris Review, The Stinging Fly, and The Dublin Review. She was the recipient of The Paris Review's 2022 Plimpton Prize for Fiction.