Western Lane
A Novel
Shortlisted for the 2023 Booker Prize • Longlisted for the 2024 Women's Prize for Fiction • A New York Times Notable Book • 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…