Xenobe Purvis and Gurnaik Johal

We welcome two brilliant debut novelists to Book Off this week, who go head to head in a war of the words...

Xenobe Purvis and Gurnaik Johal have both recently published their first novels - and they are both brilliant!

Hear them discuss their inspirations, writing and research techniques. how to choose a good title and why reading slowly is good.

In a Book Off first - Gurnaik pitches a book he hasn't even finished yet! And there are some great recommendations all round.

THE BOOK OFF

'The Portrait Of A Lady' by Henry James

VS

'Lonesome Dove' by Larry McMurtry

And here's a little more about our guests' books:

The Hounding by Xenobe Purvis

Many stories are told about the five Mansfield sisters. They are haughty, thinking themselves better than their neighbours in the picturesque village of Little Nettlebed. They have taken the death of their grandmother hard. They are liars, troublemakers, untamed and dangerous... Accounts of their behaviour differ, but the villagers all agree that the girls are odd.

One long summer, a heatwave descends. Bloated sea creatures wash up along the parched riverbed, animals grow frenzied, ravens gather on the roofs of those about to die. As the stifling heat grips the village, so does a strange rumour: the Mansfield sisters have been seen transforming into a pack of dogs.

With the witch trials only a recent memory, hysteria sets in. Slowly but surely, the villagers become convinced that something strange is taking root in Little Nettlebed. And when a bark finally leads to a bite, the sisters will be the ones to pay for it.

Visceral and richly atmospheric, The Hounding plunges its reader into 18th century Oxfordshire, where the power of a man’s word is absolute, and it is safer to be a wild animal than an unconventional young woman.

'Saraswadi' by Gurnaik Johal

Centuries ago, the holy river Saraswati flowed through what is now Punjab. Many dismiss this as myth, but when Satnam arrives in his ancestral village for his grandmother's funeral, he finds water in the dried-up well behind her house. The discovery sets in motion a contentious scheme to unearth the lost river as an act of Hindu nationalist pride.

The river changes the course of Satnam's life, and those of six others. As legends and histories resurface, the distant relatives - from a Canadian eco-saboteur to a Mauritian pest exterminator to a Bollywood stunt double - are brought together in a rapidly changing India. Ambitious, moving and brimming with folklore, Saraswati is a tour de force from one of Britain's most feted young writers.

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