{"product_id":"the-first-house-9780241819081","title":"The First House","description":"\u003cp\u003e\u003c\/p\u003eFrom the Booker Prize-shortlisted author of Burnt Sugar comes a gripping psychodrama of unravelling and rebirth  A woman's husband walks into their bedroom one evening and tells her that he wants a divorce. She is stunned. They have always had a happy marriage, an almost perfect marriage. In the following days, marooned with two young daughters in a hostile suburb, the woman starts coming apart.  As she sifts through the ruins of a shared life, she begins to notice the warning signs which she chose not to see the first time around. She wanders deep into her own mind, where marital scenes intermingle with the old myths of headless women and vengeful goddesses. Over the course of a single summer, she is splitting like an insect in its chrysalis, liquifying and reforming, stretching her new antennae toward the light.  Stiletto-sharp and darkly hypnotic, this is a novel about unhappy families - about the bloody battlefield of the home and the enduring threat posed by those closest to us.\u003ch4\u003eDetails\u003c\/h4\u003e\u003cp\u003eISBN13: 9780241819081\u003cbr\u003e\u003cspan\u003eFormat: Hardback\u003cbr\u003e\u003cspan\u003eNumber of Pages: 240\u003cbr\u003e\u003cspan\u003eEdition: \u003cbr\u003e\u003cspan\u003ePublication Date: 20 Oct 2026\u003cbr\u003e\u003cspan\u003ePublisher: Penguin Books Ltd\u003cbr\u003e\u003cspan\u003ePublication City, Country: London, United Kingdom\u003cbr\u003e\u003cspan\u003eDimensions (cm): 22.5(H)x14.4(L)x2.4(W)354\u003cbr\u003e\u003cspan\u003eWeight (gm): 354\u003c\/span\u003e\u003c\/span\u003e\u003c\/span\u003e\u003c\/span\u003e\u003c\/span\u003e\u003c\/span\u003e\u003c\/span\u003e\u003c\/span\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\u003ch4\u003eAuthor Biography\u003c\/h4\u003eAvni Doshi was born in New Jersey in 1982. Her debut novel, Burnt Sugar, was shortlisted for the Booker Prize 2020, longlisted for the Women's Prize 2021, and won the Sushila Devi Award 2021. It was named a Book of the Year by the Guardian, Economist, Spectator, New York Times Book Review and NPR and has been translated into 26 languages. Avni Doshi's writing has appeared in British Vogue, Granta and the Sunday Times. Her second novel will be published in July 2026; it is called The First House.\u003ch4\u003eReviews\u003c\/h4\u003e\u003cb\u003eVivid and vigorous, precise and unsparingly truthful\u003c\/b\u003e . . . Once again Avni Doshi gives us a woman on the edge and a dreadful sense of the horror that lies, not entirely dormant, in the domestic * Financial Times *\u003cbr\u003e\u003ci\u003eThe First House\u003c\/i\u003e dissects the tyranny of family with surgical precision, unsparing in its depiction of the delusions of marriage and motherhood - the novel boils with brutal insight. \u003cb\u003eAvni Doshi is among the finest prose stylists at work today; every page is exhilarating\u003c\/b\u003e -- Katie Kitamura, author of 'Audition'\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003eDense and alert, distinct and dreamlike, Avni Doshi takes a single intimate relationship and excavates it…\u003c\/b\u003e Its core experience [is] that of a woman embroiled in the harrowing process of extracting herself from wifehood * Guardian *\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003eLike Bergman's \u003ci\u003eScenes from a Marriage\u003c\/i\u003e or Ferrante's \u003ci\u003eDays of Abandonment\u003c\/i\u003e,\u003c\/b\u003e \u003ci\u003eThe First House\u003c\/i\u003e is at times brutal and harrowing, with sentences and scenes sharpened to a dagger point. But it is also lush, filled with symbols and signs and a kind of freedom that comes only through falling apart. \u003cb\u003eI was consumed by this novel\u003c\/b\u003e -- Amina Cain, author of 'Indelicacy'\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003eTaut and deliberate, punctuated by flashes of unsettling clarity . . . \u003c\/b\u003eDoshi excels at rendering the interior life in all its contradictions, allowing tenderness and irritation, longing and resentment, to coexist without resolution . . . She is particularly deft at capturing this sense of disorientation, where grief does not present itself cleanly but seeps into the everyday * The New York Times Style Magazine *\u003cbr\u003eReflective, poignant, flush with strange, unsettling descriptions . . . \u003cb\u003eDoshi shines in her ability to conjure the agitated atmosphere of the home . . . Shot through with symbolism, \u003ci\u003eThe First House\u003c\/i\u003e is a novel about where we turn when things fall apart\u003c\/b\u003e * Literary Review *\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003ePotent, visceral and haunting, a fever-dream interspersed with myths and legends . . . \u003c\/b\u003eThere are many books about divorce. But there are very few good books about the unravelling of a marriage and the disintegration of a mind; this is one of them * The Conversation *\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003eA hypnotic novel about the breakdown of a marriage\u003c\/b\u003e... Over the course of a summer, we witness her life fall apart and then reshape with a hopeful sense of freedom * Elle, Summer Stories *\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003eDreamy, eerie, surreal - unerring, unsentimental, unflinchingly honest\u003c\/b\u003e * Mail on Sunday *\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003eSharply intelligent, richly allegorical, unsparing psychodrama... \u003c\/b\u003eAn eviscerating study of the quiet violence of domestic discord, and the search for a new freedom * The Bookseller (Editor's Choice) *","brand":"Avni Doshi","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":50837514387673,"sku":"9780241819081","price":39.99,"currency_code":"AUD","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0502\/9530\/8441\/files\/9780241819081.jpg?v=1793104987","url":"https:\/\/www.arielbooks.com.au\/products\/the-first-house-9780241819081","provider":"Ariel","version":"1.0","type":"link"}