Praise for The House Next to the Factory
‘'What links Sonal Kohli's beautiful, perspicacious stories is an aspirational India informed by historical and economic change. Sonal is very shrewd when it comes to grasping her characters’ desires and failings, and also the subtle ways in which their decisions are either enabled or thwarted by their history and by new opportunities. She has a way of absorbing the reader in her world, and also revealing very delicately how that world is surprising, unexpected, and in flux. I think the strength of many of her stories lies in the way that they are about very little, and about ordinary people, so that the interregnum described seems to capture something that’s vital but only partly perceptible from a distance.' – Amit Chaudhuri
‘In quietly ambitious prose, Sonal Kohli charts the turbulent three decades of a ‘rising’ India. The House Next to the Factory is one of the very rare fictions to examine the immense human costs – profound emotional and psychological disorientations – that the Indian bourgeoisie has paid for its material success’ – Pankaj Mishra
‘Sonal Kohli’s stories of a modern India continually feeling the reverberations of its own turbulent history are finely observed and richly atmospheric. Her clean, precise prose is alive with immediacy, and she excels at capturing moments of resonant stillness and unexpected change in her characters’ quietly complicated lives’ – Carys Davies
'Beautifully crafted and written, with so much meaning and so many possibilities imbued in every sentence' – Manil Suri
‘Kohli layers story on top of story with finesse and grace. An abiding collection from a highly skilled observer of lives and places’ – Ruby Cowling
‘Thoughtful, delicate and wide-ranging, The House Next to the Factory is a testament to the often-overlooked power of the ordinary’ – Madhuri Vijay
‘Here is a fully realized world with many vivid characters observed with sensitivity and grace. And the storytelling is utterly immersive. One of the most pleasurable works of fiction I’ve read in a long time’ – Chandrahas Choudhury
‘In prose that is spare yet astutely detailed, Kohli evokes entire lives through just a few deft strokes. Finely-hewn, these stories carry a lingering effect’ – Sharanya Manivannan