Being a British Gujarati doll there were lots of questions about how much space I'm allowed to take up in the world. A lot of that was outside but then also within because those ways of thinking they infiltrate your own mind, she says. "I always felt this huge sense of that I wasn't the Gujarati grandd or toro daughter"
This week on the Penguin Podcast, Nihal Arthanayake is joined by the second winner of Stormzy's Merky Books Prize, and she was also one of the Observer's best new novelists, it's Jyoti Patel.
Jyoti joins us to discuss her debut novel, The Things That We Lost, a story of family, loss and how far we go to protect those we love.
Also discussed on the podcast is the experience of mixing British and Gujarati cultures, the privilege of studying the arts, the importance of being your authentic self, the idea of the perfect sentence, and where it is that Jyoti feels the writer's life most intensely.
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