The First House A Novel

“Each page is sharp, piercing, and totally defiant of the expected.” —Douglas Stuart

From the Booker Prize finalist author of Burnt Sugar comes a riveting novel of rupture and rebirth, of one woman’s journey to understand the fault lines in her marriage, her home, and her family.

When my husband comes into the bedroom we have shared for thirteen years and tells me he doesn’t want to be married anymore, I reach for my neck. My head is missing.

A husband announces he is leaving, that he was never happy. A woman is left behind with their two children in the house they built together, reeling at this forced recasting of the story of their marriage. Everything becomes strange: an encounter at the grocery store, a looming cicada horde, a statue of Diana that suddenly appears in her neighbor’s yard. Or was it always there?

As she wades through the aftermath of her marriage, her complicated family resurfaces. Although close to her parents, her relationship with them is strained, and she is fully estranged from her older sister—the perfect daughter—who still lives at home and always disapproved of her husband. So when did the trouble begin? And where will she go from here?

When she was a child, an astrologer in India told her parents that the family would die in water. Ever since, they’ve avoided pools and lakes and the ocean; no one ever learned to swim. From the Booker finalist and beloved author of Burnt Sugar comes a brilliant story of betrayal, renunciation, and renewal, of a woman spiraling who swims to the other side and comes up for air.

Avni Doshi was born in New Jersey and lives in Dubai. She has a BA in art history from Barnard College in New York and a master’s in history of art from University College London. Her writing has appeared in British Vogue, Granta, and The Sunday Times (London). Her first novel, Burnt Sugar, was originally released in India under the title Girl in White Cotton, where it won the 2021 Sushila Devi Award. Upon publication in the UK, Burnt Sugar was shortlisted for the 2020 Booker Prize. Named a 2020 Book of the Year by The Guardian, The Economist, The Spectator, and NPR, it has been published in twenty-six languages. In 2021, it was longlisted for the Women’s Prize and selected as one of The New York Times Book Review’s 100 Notable Books of the year. In 2022, it was a finalist for the PEN/Hemingway Award.