Belonging
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From the darkest days of the British Raj to the aftermath of the First World War, Belonging tells the interwoven story of three generations and their struggles to understand and free themselves from a troubled history steeped in colonial violence. This is a novel of secrets that unwind through Lila Langdon's story of exile to England, through her grandmother Cecily's letters home from India, and through the diaries kept by her father, Henry, as he puzzles over the enigma of his birth and his stormy marriage to the mysterious Rebecca.
Publisher: Myriad Editions ISBN: 978-1-908434-74-6 You can order BELONGING post-free direct from the Myriad Editions website, including signed copies, for the same price as from Amazon. Also available from all major booksellers or post-free online from Hive.co.uk, which is run by independent booksellers. |
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BELONGING has been published in Portuguese and Polish and in an Indian edition in English.
SHORTLISTED - THE AUTHOR'S CLUB BEST FIRST NOVEL AWARD. SHORTLISTED - THE WAVERTON GOOD READS AWARD 2017 LONGLISTED - THE HISTORICAL WRITERS' ASSOCIATION GOLDSBORO DEBUT CROWN AWARD. LONGLISTED - THE TATA LIVELIT! BEST BOOK AWARD |
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Recent Reviews for Belonging
"My heartfelt congratulations on Belonging. Time poor, I rarely find the time to read or even finish novels these days. Having had Belonging on my Kindle since it longlisted on the HWA Debut Crown list, I decided to start it this afternoon. I found myself unable to put it down. I read throughout the rest of the day, pausing only to eat and do my kids' bedtime stories. I finished it at 11.30 p.m.
It is, to put it simply, magnificent. I used to read a lot of John Masters when I was younger, and I loved the Siege of Krishnapur too, so I had an 'idea' of 19th century colonial India. Your book brought that world even more vividly to life. The characters were so human too. Please accept huge kudos from a fellow author for a wonderful, wonderful book.
Ben Kane - original committee member of the HWA (Historical Writers’ Association) and author of "Clash of Empires", "Legions of Rome", "Spartacus" and "Hannibal" series.
"Umi Sinha’s Belonging unfurls a dynastic saga through three generations of one troubled family, stretching from the Indian Rebellion to the aftermath of the Great War. The back-and-forth narrative is built on a sturdy armature of deep research, finely wrought prose and expert characterisation. Its focus on the search for love and connection in a chaotic, divided society is hugely affecting."
Review from Anthony Quinn, judge of The Author's Club Best First Novel Award
"Stepped a little out of my comfort zone (which is peculiar literary fiction from around the world) by reading a historical novel - Belonging by Umi Sinha, which is set during the British Raj in India. The chapters alternate between three characters - 3 generations of one family - told in the form of letters, diary entries, and first-person narration in turn, and taking in the period from the Indian Mutiny to the First World War. I was hugely impressed, this is an immensely powerful novel and it's hard to believe it's a debut."
Kushti Guardian Books Blog (March 2016)
"Unforgettable, emotional, compelling. I’ve procrastinated writing my review for Belonging (Umi Sinha’s debut novel) hoping to gain some distance … to disentangle myself, be objective and coherent but even with over a month lapsing since I finished reading, I still feel the same. Belonging is a powerful novel. Hooking the reader in from the beginning? Belonging certainly does that. [...] Umi Sinha brings the settings in India and Sussex alive. It was so easy to visualise the place and the time. The scenes in Cawnpore and the makeshift Indian hospital during WW1 in the Royal Pavilion, Brighton are etched on my heart. [...] My review can’t possibly do justice. Belonging is a story I won’t be able to forget."
You can read the whole review at Jera's Jamboree blog
"Probably one of the most undiscovered and underrated books from the past year. [...] I almost randomly picked up 'Belonging'. The cover was beautiful, but the author and book were completely unheard of, and a quick check on GR told me that with a 4+ rating it was a safe buy. But I was not prepared for this book to be as fantastic as it was! Why hasn't it showed up on any lists!? And I am surprised that even the Guardian hasn't done a review on it, especially since this one has such a contextual British-Indian theme.
I seldom describe a book as "well crafted". Many are well written but this one has something beautiful and intricate about it, much like the fine embroidery that adorns its cover and is a pivotal part of the story.
As a debut author, Umi Sinha has set the bar very high and admirably demonstrates, by example, her background as a creative writing mentor and manuscript appraiser. There is something about epistolary novels and I loved this one even more because nearly two-thirds of it is written in the form of letters and diary entries - making the reader so much more involved and engaged with characters and their deepest emotions. Sinha treats her characters with a lot of compassion and sensitivity and one comes away understanding each one - why they became who they were, what shaped their lives. This is a book worth reading again. Beautiful and elegant."
Reviewed by Bigsna on Goodreads
Belonging: historical fiction pertinent to the major problem of the 21st century
"Belonging begins with a tragic event that blights the life of the story’s main protagonist, witnessed but not understood by her, or by us the readers at that moment. My urge to understand what had happened, and why it happened was one of my main drivers to read on, on a first reading. The compulsion to find out was so compelling I read the story quickly – the prose is simple and straightforward and lends itself to immediate engagement and understanding, as is the book’s organisation in several short ‘bite-size’ pieces.
On a second reading I found myself carried along again, now at another level, more focussed on the detail of what was happening to the protagonist, and to find out what in her family’s history was the cause. The story is multi-generational, but set as it is between 100 and 160 years ago, we can view the different generations with equal weight. This story has a fine balance and it has been so well researched you could believe the author was an eye-witness to the daily lives and the terrible events her characters experience. That makes readers also eye-witnesses. You can believe the characters’ voices are completely authentic, while they, as generations are, are distinctive. The structure is beautifully poised, giving us, and the protagonist knowledge and understanding at the right time. It has a rather marvellous effect of letting us experience the lives of ancestors as if they were contemporaries. And, rather like great science, as the questions the novel poses are answered, more questions are exposed. It will merit another reading.
The subject matter of the story is the disjunction of a sense of belonging in characters living or displaced within the context of the British Raj in the 19th and early 20th centuries. Sinha accurately describes with an even hand atrocities perpetrated in India and Europe by all sides. There is no sense of authorial judgement, no bias although it would be fashionable today to condemn the Empire. She lets the facts speak for themselves. My personal take is that an unjustified sense of superiority by British people (I am British) reverberates beyond the pages of this book and persists today. Sinha’s arrogant aristocrats consider persons of mixed race to have inherited the weaknesses of both races and to be acceptable to neither. Modern biology and sociology would tell us how wrong is this prejudice; rather the mixing of races brings hybrid-vigour and advancement. We are living now through an unprecedented migration of displaced peoples and the reaction of belligerent nationalism and terrorism as people struggle to establish a sense of belonging, making ‘Belonging’ by Umi Sinha, its questions and understanding thoroughly relevant to the central problem of today."
Reviewed by "ear" on Amazon.co.uk.
“I read 'Belonging' a few months ago now and it still haunts me. Images and scenes appear in my waking or sleeping dreams. The book is subtle and powerful, like a slow acting drug that binds itself to your subconscious and won't let go.” JP on amazon.co.uk
"In this touching and lithely written debut novel, the gaps separating the generations are wide, but their shared roots in the British Raj and desire for understanding pull them back together. The form it takes is unusual for a family saga – three separate narratives, related in alternating chapters – and this works to heighten immediacy [...] The legacy of long-hidden mysteries lingers throughout: did Cecily die in childbirth, as Henry grows up believing? What devastating image did the tablecloth depict? The answers are skillfully revealed in time, yet this is much more than a tale of family secrets. Belonging illustrates the complexity of Anglo-Indian relationships in colonial India and England, Indian soldiers’ valiant WWI service, and the pain of dislocation and unattainable love. Reading it is a deeply felt, mesmerizing experience."
You can read the whole review at Reading the Past blog
A review from Australia:
"The author of Belonging has achieved admirably what many don’t even attempt, with her seamless changing of voice from a young girl to a small boy and a newly-wed woman. All are transformed with time and experience and other voices are successfully introduced as their stories unfold. Sinha convinces her reader of multiple settings: glittering dinner parties and class/caste distinctions during the Raj; the extreme heat of the Indian plains and the dreary wetness of an English winter; the battleground and final days of Cawnpore and the killing mud of Ypres. But more compelling are the internal landscapes and conflicts of the central characters as their own searches reveal their places of belonging within the worlds they thought they knew.
"I love a book that I can’t put down. From the puzzling and shocking opening I have to read on and find out what lies behind it. Only towards the end is the rationale for all these complex struggles and secrets finally resolved." Read the whole review by Sue Goss at Other Terrain Journal
A review from the USA:
"In this touching and lithely written debut novel, the gaps separating the generations are wide, but their shared roots in the British Raj and desire for understanding pull them back together. The form it takes is unusual for a family saga – three separate narratives, related in alternating chapters – and this works to heighten immediacy [...] The legacy of long-hidden mysteries lingers throughout... The answers are skillfully revealed in time, yet this is much more than a tale of family secrets. Belonging illustrates the complexity of Anglo-Indian relationships in colonial India and England, Indian soldiers’ valiant WWI service, and the pain of dislocation and unattainable love. Reading it is a deeply felt, mesmerizing experience." Read the whole review at The Historical Society
"If ever there was a time I’ve been glad I judged a book by its cover, this is it. “Belonging” is even more exquisite on the inside than on the outside, a delicately spun tale with a rich emotional resonance that gets a grip on your heart and won’t let go. [...] For me, this novel exemplifies one of the great things about reading: a book that glides in completely under the radar and then blows your mind with its quality and artistry. The skill with which the novel switches between eras and narrators and slowly but surely gathers all the threads together is extraordinary. Often with stories told through multiple voices I find that I’m more interested in some strands than others, but not here. Come for the cover just as I did by all means – but stay for the content, because it’s truly a work of art." You can read the whole review at Girl, reading
"I was given this as a Christmas gift, and have to say what a brilliant present it is. A beautifully written account of the British in India from the 1850's to the early Twentieth Century. I can thoroughly recommend it to those who love M.M.Kaye , and it also compares favourably to another of my all time favourites set in India, "Zemindar' by Valerie Fitzgerald. If all the books I read this year are as wonderful as this first one then 2016 is going to be a great year for us book lovers!!" T.F. White on amazon.co.uk
"This novel makes you think about the damage that secrets and lies can inflict on the unsuspecting and innocent. Silence is used as a mask, a shield and as a weapon depending on whether or not the protagonist feels like they don’t know where they belong, or that they are the property of someone with no control over their own lives. Every character is a fully realised human being with strengths and weaknesses, and Sinha writes each one with sensitivity and empathy as the truth of each situation is gradually unveiled. Love is the overriding emotion in this novel, a deep love that comes from understanding what has gone before in the hope that what is to come will be better, which is why this novel is one of my favourite books of the year."
Pamreader - My Top Ten Novels of 2015
"Sinha balances emotional drama with some hard-hitting narrative and it really is an excellent read, one of my favourites of 2015."
We Love This Book
"This book offers all I could wish for from a novel…and then some. […]
There are many passages of tremendous charm and enchanting beauty, a surprising amount of humour, and a warmth and engagement with the characters that made me think of Jean Renoir’s film, ‘The River’ and Forster’s ‘A Passage To India’. And – curiously – of Powell and Pressburger’s ‘Black Narcissus’. ‘Belonging’ is a humane and hopeful work and a ‘right rip-roaring yarn’, to boot (whatever that means). What else do you want? Blood? Oh, you’ll get that." Exkingzog
From a review on amazon.co.uk
"This is a dream of a book. Beautifully written and movingly told. It deals with the big themes of life; memory, secrets, family, and homeland, with an intimate eye for detail. From the dark days of the British Raj, to the aftermath of the First World War, it tells the tale of three generations and their struggles. Of course, generally anything set in India, no matter in what period, usually captivates me. It’s all so exotic, so different, so, well, so foreign. I love reading about the heat, the markets, the customs, the different rules of behaviour. It strikes me that we are all familiar with them from watching films and reading books, and there is nothing wrong with that – unless the films and books aren’t the real deal. This one is. You can just tell. The book is a combination of diaries and letters that give a huge insight into all of the people and the times. Secrets and a shocking incident pass through the hands of generations only to be unearthed many years later. If I tell you that the scandalous event involves a tablecloth, you would be none the wiser, but you would be considerably poorer for not knowing."
Laura Lockington
Brighton & Hove Independent
"Belonging has a lot going on. It’s an epic novel of secrets, of loss, and of love; it’s a novel that discusses race and ethnicity and colonial violence; and it’s a novel of growing up. Lila Langdon is only 12 when a family tragedy changes her life forever. She has to leave India to live with her great aunt in Sussex, where Lila pieces together family secrets from journals and letters. Belonging is already getting some glowing reader reviews, so I’m definitely keeping this one near the top of my to-read list."
Book Riot, USA
"What ‘Belonging’ also succeeds in showing us is that our personal histories are deeply intertwined not only with the era in which we live and the events we experience, but also those experiences our families have endured and survived in the past. We are shaped as much by their history as our own. History, it seems is a collective as well as an individual experience.
Jen Harvey
(Click on her name for the full review: a masterly analysis of the themes of the book which even I found illuminating! She also did a wonderfully thoughtful interview for Mash Stories)
"All in all it left me with a deep sense of melancholy, but hope, and having used it to reflect upon my own sense of belonging, more at peace with myself. It is a beautiful book and firmly on my list of favourites."
The Committed Reader
(This review, by someone who just picked the book up as an impulse buy in the airport, is one of my favourites, because it sparked reflections about her own sense of belonging.)
Reviews of the Indian edition:
"Belonging is one of the rare books in which as a reader you are in love with all the three characters simultaneously. The narrative is like an exquisite tapestry... There are perfectly crafted glimpses of violence perpetrated by the natives against the British in 1857, loyalty of Indian soldiers, the insensitivity of the British army towards Indian soldiers in the First World War. The author remarkably paints the societal system where sahibs and their bibis, paedophily, incest, cheating wives and friends are juxtaposed with loyalty, honour, valour, sensitivity and true love."
You can read the whole review on The Tribune website
"From the years that preceded the great mutiny of 1857 to the unsettling times after the First World War, Umi Sinha’s debut novel Belonging is a complex, intricately embroidered narrative of lives caught in the vortex of history. Spanning across almost a century, the novel tells the umbilically connected stories of three generations of British expatriates. Indian writers in English have claimed the language with forceful confidence, and have been unrelenting in their engagement with colonialism and are self-reflexive of their own voices as postcolonial writers. But not all writers in English are frightfully original. Often one encounters a familiar whining about colonial legacies, immigrant disaffection or nostalgia, that too in tiresome prose. Sinha’s book is a delight because it deviates from the predictable anti-colonial narrative and instead portrays the intimate lives of the colonials and not the natives. Also, the writing is both gripping and well-researched. She gets the history right."
You can read the whole review on The New Indian Express website
Historians' views of Belonging:
"I enjoyed your novel immensely and also learned a great deal from it. The weaving of the three generational stories is beautifully done, and the ear for place, time and language seemed to me pitch-perfect. And of course, I was also fascinated by your fictional reconstruction of the kind of source that I use a great deal in my work on the First World War: correspondence and diaries are such wonderful revelations about the inter-subjectivity of history and when one can find ways (as a historian) to read enough of them, one can (cautiously) begin to see patterns and make generalisations. Novelists have other ways of writing truths about experience, and I enjoyed those in your novel, too."
John Horne, MRIA, Emeritus Fellow, former Professor of Modern European History, Trinity College Dublin, Leverhulme Visiting Professor, University of Oxford (2016-17), and editor of: A Companion to World War I (Wiley Blackwell Companions to World History)
"Umi Sinha tells an 'edge of seat' story. Her research is impeccable and the way that she overlays historical events with fiction is impressive. This is the story of life in India at a time when deeply entrenched British cultural prejudices - mostly brought out from the UK after the 1857 Indian Mutiny - dominated every facet of life as a colonial and ended up constantly ruining the lives of those who actually stood to gain the most from the acquisition of empire."
Lt Col (Retd) FMG de Planta de Wildenberg of Cassino Battlefield Tours
It is, to put it simply, magnificent. I used to read a lot of John Masters when I was younger, and I loved the Siege of Krishnapur too, so I had an 'idea' of 19th century colonial India. Your book brought that world even more vividly to life. The characters were so human too. Please accept huge kudos from a fellow author for a wonderful, wonderful book.
Ben Kane - original committee member of the HWA (Historical Writers’ Association) and author of "Clash of Empires", "Legions of Rome", "Spartacus" and "Hannibal" series.
"Umi Sinha’s Belonging unfurls a dynastic saga through three generations of one troubled family, stretching from the Indian Rebellion to the aftermath of the Great War. The back-and-forth narrative is built on a sturdy armature of deep research, finely wrought prose and expert characterisation. Its focus on the search for love and connection in a chaotic, divided society is hugely affecting."
Review from Anthony Quinn, judge of The Author's Club Best First Novel Award
"Stepped a little out of my comfort zone (which is peculiar literary fiction from around the world) by reading a historical novel - Belonging by Umi Sinha, which is set during the British Raj in India. The chapters alternate between three characters - 3 generations of one family - told in the form of letters, diary entries, and first-person narration in turn, and taking in the period from the Indian Mutiny to the First World War. I was hugely impressed, this is an immensely powerful novel and it's hard to believe it's a debut."
Kushti Guardian Books Blog (March 2016)
"Unforgettable, emotional, compelling. I’ve procrastinated writing my review for Belonging (Umi Sinha’s debut novel) hoping to gain some distance … to disentangle myself, be objective and coherent but even with over a month lapsing since I finished reading, I still feel the same. Belonging is a powerful novel. Hooking the reader in from the beginning? Belonging certainly does that. [...] Umi Sinha brings the settings in India and Sussex alive. It was so easy to visualise the place and the time. The scenes in Cawnpore and the makeshift Indian hospital during WW1 in the Royal Pavilion, Brighton are etched on my heart. [...] My review can’t possibly do justice. Belonging is a story I won’t be able to forget."
You can read the whole review at Jera's Jamboree blog
"Probably one of the most undiscovered and underrated books from the past year. [...] I almost randomly picked up 'Belonging'. The cover was beautiful, but the author and book were completely unheard of, and a quick check on GR told me that with a 4+ rating it was a safe buy. But I was not prepared for this book to be as fantastic as it was! Why hasn't it showed up on any lists!? And I am surprised that even the Guardian hasn't done a review on it, especially since this one has such a contextual British-Indian theme.
I seldom describe a book as "well crafted". Many are well written but this one has something beautiful and intricate about it, much like the fine embroidery that adorns its cover and is a pivotal part of the story.
As a debut author, Umi Sinha has set the bar very high and admirably demonstrates, by example, her background as a creative writing mentor and manuscript appraiser. There is something about epistolary novels and I loved this one even more because nearly two-thirds of it is written in the form of letters and diary entries - making the reader so much more involved and engaged with characters and their deepest emotions. Sinha treats her characters with a lot of compassion and sensitivity and one comes away understanding each one - why they became who they were, what shaped their lives. This is a book worth reading again. Beautiful and elegant."
Reviewed by Bigsna on Goodreads
Belonging: historical fiction pertinent to the major problem of the 21st century
"Belonging begins with a tragic event that blights the life of the story’s main protagonist, witnessed but not understood by her, or by us the readers at that moment. My urge to understand what had happened, and why it happened was one of my main drivers to read on, on a first reading. The compulsion to find out was so compelling I read the story quickly – the prose is simple and straightforward and lends itself to immediate engagement and understanding, as is the book’s organisation in several short ‘bite-size’ pieces.
On a second reading I found myself carried along again, now at another level, more focussed on the detail of what was happening to the protagonist, and to find out what in her family’s history was the cause. The story is multi-generational, but set as it is between 100 and 160 years ago, we can view the different generations with equal weight. This story has a fine balance and it has been so well researched you could believe the author was an eye-witness to the daily lives and the terrible events her characters experience. That makes readers also eye-witnesses. You can believe the characters’ voices are completely authentic, while they, as generations are, are distinctive. The structure is beautifully poised, giving us, and the protagonist knowledge and understanding at the right time. It has a rather marvellous effect of letting us experience the lives of ancestors as if they were contemporaries. And, rather like great science, as the questions the novel poses are answered, more questions are exposed. It will merit another reading.
The subject matter of the story is the disjunction of a sense of belonging in characters living or displaced within the context of the British Raj in the 19th and early 20th centuries. Sinha accurately describes with an even hand atrocities perpetrated in India and Europe by all sides. There is no sense of authorial judgement, no bias although it would be fashionable today to condemn the Empire. She lets the facts speak for themselves. My personal take is that an unjustified sense of superiority by British people (I am British) reverberates beyond the pages of this book and persists today. Sinha’s arrogant aristocrats consider persons of mixed race to have inherited the weaknesses of both races and to be acceptable to neither. Modern biology and sociology would tell us how wrong is this prejudice; rather the mixing of races brings hybrid-vigour and advancement. We are living now through an unprecedented migration of displaced peoples and the reaction of belligerent nationalism and terrorism as people struggle to establish a sense of belonging, making ‘Belonging’ by Umi Sinha, its questions and understanding thoroughly relevant to the central problem of today."
Reviewed by "ear" on Amazon.co.uk.
“I read 'Belonging' a few months ago now and it still haunts me. Images and scenes appear in my waking or sleeping dreams. The book is subtle and powerful, like a slow acting drug that binds itself to your subconscious and won't let go.” JP on amazon.co.uk
"In this touching and lithely written debut novel, the gaps separating the generations are wide, but their shared roots in the British Raj and desire for understanding pull them back together. The form it takes is unusual for a family saga – three separate narratives, related in alternating chapters – and this works to heighten immediacy [...] The legacy of long-hidden mysteries lingers throughout: did Cecily die in childbirth, as Henry grows up believing? What devastating image did the tablecloth depict? The answers are skillfully revealed in time, yet this is much more than a tale of family secrets. Belonging illustrates the complexity of Anglo-Indian relationships in colonial India and England, Indian soldiers’ valiant WWI service, and the pain of dislocation and unattainable love. Reading it is a deeply felt, mesmerizing experience."
You can read the whole review at Reading the Past blog
A review from Australia:
"The author of Belonging has achieved admirably what many don’t even attempt, with her seamless changing of voice from a young girl to a small boy and a newly-wed woman. All are transformed with time and experience and other voices are successfully introduced as their stories unfold. Sinha convinces her reader of multiple settings: glittering dinner parties and class/caste distinctions during the Raj; the extreme heat of the Indian plains and the dreary wetness of an English winter; the battleground and final days of Cawnpore and the killing mud of Ypres. But more compelling are the internal landscapes and conflicts of the central characters as their own searches reveal their places of belonging within the worlds they thought they knew.
"I love a book that I can’t put down. From the puzzling and shocking opening I have to read on and find out what lies behind it. Only towards the end is the rationale for all these complex struggles and secrets finally resolved." Read the whole review by Sue Goss at Other Terrain Journal
A review from the USA:
"In this touching and lithely written debut novel, the gaps separating the generations are wide, but their shared roots in the British Raj and desire for understanding pull them back together. The form it takes is unusual for a family saga – three separate narratives, related in alternating chapters – and this works to heighten immediacy [...] The legacy of long-hidden mysteries lingers throughout... The answers are skillfully revealed in time, yet this is much more than a tale of family secrets. Belonging illustrates the complexity of Anglo-Indian relationships in colonial India and England, Indian soldiers’ valiant WWI service, and the pain of dislocation and unattainable love. Reading it is a deeply felt, mesmerizing experience." Read the whole review at The Historical Society
"If ever there was a time I’ve been glad I judged a book by its cover, this is it. “Belonging” is even more exquisite on the inside than on the outside, a delicately spun tale with a rich emotional resonance that gets a grip on your heart and won’t let go. [...] For me, this novel exemplifies one of the great things about reading: a book that glides in completely under the radar and then blows your mind with its quality and artistry. The skill with which the novel switches between eras and narrators and slowly but surely gathers all the threads together is extraordinary. Often with stories told through multiple voices I find that I’m more interested in some strands than others, but not here. Come for the cover just as I did by all means – but stay for the content, because it’s truly a work of art." You can read the whole review at Girl, reading
"I was given this as a Christmas gift, and have to say what a brilliant present it is. A beautifully written account of the British in India from the 1850's to the early Twentieth Century. I can thoroughly recommend it to those who love M.M.Kaye , and it also compares favourably to another of my all time favourites set in India, "Zemindar' by Valerie Fitzgerald. If all the books I read this year are as wonderful as this first one then 2016 is going to be a great year for us book lovers!!" T.F. White on amazon.co.uk
"This novel makes you think about the damage that secrets and lies can inflict on the unsuspecting and innocent. Silence is used as a mask, a shield and as a weapon depending on whether or not the protagonist feels like they don’t know where they belong, or that they are the property of someone with no control over their own lives. Every character is a fully realised human being with strengths and weaknesses, and Sinha writes each one with sensitivity and empathy as the truth of each situation is gradually unveiled. Love is the overriding emotion in this novel, a deep love that comes from understanding what has gone before in the hope that what is to come will be better, which is why this novel is one of my favourite books of the year."
Pamreader - My Top Ten Novels of 2015
"Sinha balances emotional drama with some hard-hitting narrative and it really is an excellent read, one of my favourites of 2015."
We Love This Book
"This book offers all I could wish for from a novel…and then some. […]
There are many passages of tremendous charm and enchanting beauty, a surprising amount of humour, and a warmth and engagement with the characters that made me think of Jean Renoir’s film, ‘The River’ and Forster’s ‘A Passage To India’. And – curiously – of Powell and Pressburger’s ‘Black Narcissus’. ‘Belonging’ is a humane and hopeful work and a ‘right rip-roaring yarn’, to boot (whatever that means). What else do you want? Blood? Oh, you’ll get that." Exkingzog
From a review on amazon.co.uk
"This is a dream of a book. Beautifully written and movingly told. It deals with the big themes of life; memory, secrets, family, and homeland, with an intimate eye for detail. From the dark days of the British Raj, to the aftermath of the First World War, it tells the tale of three generations and their struggles. Of course, generally anything set in India, no matter in what period, usually captivates me. It’s all so exotic, so different, so, well, so foreign. I love reading about the heat, the markets, the customs, the different rules of behaviour. It strikes me that we are all familiar with them from watching films and reading books, and there is nothing wrong with that – unless the films and books aren’t the real deal. This one is. You can just tell. The book is a combination of diaries and letters that give a huge insight into all of the people and the times. Secrets and a shocking incident pass through the hands of generations only to be unearthed many years later. If I tell you that the scandalous event involves a tablecloth, you would be none the wiser, but you would be considerably poorer for not knowing."
Laura Lockington
Brighton & Hove Independent
"Belonging has a lot going on. It’s an epic novel of secrets, of loss, and of love; it’s a novel that discusses race and ethnicity and colonial violence; and it’s a novel of growing up. Lila Langdon is only 12 when a family tragedy changes her life forever. She has to leave India to live with her great aunt in Sussex, where Lila pieces together family secrets from journals and letters. Belonging is already getting some glowing reader reviews, so I’m definitely keeping this one near the top of my to-read list."
Book Riot, USA
"What ‘Belonging’ also succeeds in showing us is that our personal histories are deeply intertwined not only with the era in which we live and the events we experience, but also those experiences our families have endured and survived in the past. We are shaped as much by their history as our own. History, it seems is a collective as well as an individual experience.
Jen Harvey
(Click on her name for the full review: a masterly analysis of the themes of the book which even I found illuminating! She also did a wonderfully thoughtful interview for Mash Stories)
"All in all it left me with a deep sense of melancholy, but hope, and having used it to reflect upon my own sense of belonging, more at peace with myself. It is a beautiful book and firmly on my list of favourites."
The Committed Reader
(This review, by someone who just picked the book up as an impulse buy in the airport, is one of my favourites, because it sparked reflections about her own sense of belonging.)
Reviews of the Indian edition:
"Belonging is one of the rare books in which as a reader you are in love with all the three characters simultaneously. The narrative is like an exquisite tapestry... There are perfectly crafted glimpses of violence perpetrated by the natives against the British in 1857, loyalty of Indian soldiers, the insensitivity of the British army towards Indian soldiers in the First World War. The author remarkably paints the societal system where sahibs and their bibis, paedophily, incest, cheating wives and friends are juxtaposed with loyalty, honour, valour, sensitivity and true love."
You can read the whole review on The Tribune website
"From the years that preceded the great mutiny of 1857 to the unsettling times after the First World War, Umi Sinha’s debut novel Belonging is a complex, intricately embroidered narrative of lives caught in the vortex of history. Spanning across almost a century, the novel tells the umbilically connected stories of three generations of British expatriates. Indian writers in English have claimed the language with forceful confidence, and have been unrelenting in their engagement with colonialism and are self-reflexive of their own voices as postcolonial writers. But not all writers in English are frightfully original. Often one encounters a familiar whining about colonial legacies, immigrant disaffection or nostalgia, that too in tiresome prose. Sinha’s book is a delight because it deviates from the predictable anti-colonial narrative and instead portrays the intimate lives of the colonials and not the natives. Also, the writing is both gripping and well-researched. She gets the history right."
You can read the whole review on The New Indian Express website
Historians' views of Belonging:
"I enjoyed your novel immensely and also learned a great deal from it. The weaving of the three generational stories is beautifully done, and the ear for place, time and language seemed to me pitch-perfect. And of course, I was also fascinated by your fictional reconstruction of the kind of source that I use a great deal in my work on the First World War: correspondence and diaries are such wonderful revelations about the inter-subjectivity of history and when one can find ways (as a historian) to read enough of them, one can (cautiously) begin to see patterns and make generalisations. Novelists have other ways of writing truths about experience, and I enjoyed those in your novel, too."
John Horne, MRIA, Emeritus Fellow, former Professor of Modern European History, Trinity College Dublin, Leverhulme Visiting Professor, University of Oxford (2016-17), and editor of: A Companion to World War I (Wiley Blackwell Companions to World History)
"Umi Sinha tells an 'edge of seat' story. Her research is impeccable and the way that she overlays historical events with fiction is impressive. This is the story of life in India at a time when deeply entrenched British cultural prejudices - mostly brought out from the UK after the 1857 Indian Mutiny - dominated every facet of life as a colonial and ended up constantly ruining the lives of those who actually stood to gain the most from the acquisition of empire."
Lt Col (Retd) FMG de Planta de Wildenberg of Cassino Battlefield Tours
And this one is from Tripfiction, who recommend reading for travellers, followed by a question and answer session.
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FUNDING FROM SOCIETY OF AUTHORS AND ARTS COUNCIL ENGLAND
In 2017, I was fortunate enough awarded both a research grant from The Society of Authors for travel to Italy to research my second novel, and an Artists International Development Grant by Arts Council England and the British Council for travel to India to research the Indian part of the novel and develop my storytelling work and some heritage research and autobiographical writing. Huge thanks to both organisations. You can read about both sets of research trips at: http://umisinhaauthor.blogspot.co.uk/
In 2017, I was fortunate enough awarded both a research grant from The Society of Authors for travel to Italy to research my second novel, and an Artists International Development Grant by Arts Council England and the British Council for travel to India to research the Indian part of the novel and develop my storytelling work and some heritage research and autobiographical writing. Huge thanks to both organisations. You can read about both sets of research trips at: http://umisinhaauthor.blogspot.co.uk/