The Nine-Chambered Heart

'You, though, are as beautiful as light splitting through glass.' Nine characters recall their relationship with a young woman - the same woman - whom they have loved, or who has loved them. We piece her together, much as we do with others in our lives, in incomplete but illuminating slivers. Set in familiar, nameless cities, moving between east and west, The Nine-Chambered Heart is a compendium of shifting perspectives that follows one woman's life, making her dazzlingly real in one moment, and obscuring her in the very next. Janice Pariat's exquisitely written new novel is about the fragile, fragmented nature of identity - how others see us only in bits and pieces, and how sometimes we tend to become what others perceive us to be.


Genre: Literary Fiction

"Superb. She had me at page one." - Chris Cleave

"Whatever Janice Pariat is doing in these vignettes – unravelling layers, offering shards, making and unmaking a heart – she forces you to alter your vision. By turning the intimate eye of love inside out, she’s saying, here is the real wonder: a whole is made of many broken parts. It is a startling way to look at ourselves, to reach for the stories of our own hearts." - Tishani Doshi