Jyoti Patel on identity, belonging, and how to ask someone the question: “Where are you from?”

“I didn't write this book to be hugely sellable, hugely commercial - I wrote it because it’s a story that I felt needed to be told.”

Jyoti Patel’s debut novel, ‘The Things That We Lost’ is the story of a British Gujarati mother and son discovering how they fit into the world and learning how to balance the Gujarati and British sides of their identities. 

The book earnt Jyoti the Merky Books New Writers Prize 2021, a competition launched by Stormzy and Penguin House UK to discover unpublished and underrepresented writers. 

In this episode, Jyoti joins Krishnan to talk about feeling othered, why her book is written in the voice of a young man, and how to ask someone the question, “where are you from?” 

Produced by: Imahn Robertson