Language | English |
---|---|
ISBN-10 | 0-00-723173-3 |
ISBN-13 | 978-0002554039 |
No of pages | 343 |
Font Size | Medium |
Book Publisher | Fourth Estate |
Published Date | 02 May 2006 |
Gautam Malkani was born in West London in 1976. He was educated at Cambridge University and was appointed director of the Financial Times's Creative Business section in 2005.
He completed Nonconstant shortly after the bombings in London last July.
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‘Londonstani’, Gautam Malkani's electrifying debut, reveals a Britain that has never before been explored in the novel: a country of young Asians and white boys (desist and gores) trying to work out a place for themselves in the shadow of the divergent cultures of their parents’ generation.
Set close to the Heathrow feed roads of Hounslow, Malkani shows us the lives of a gang of four young men: Harjit the ring leader, a Sikh, violent, determined his caste stay pure; Ravi, determinedly tactless, a sheep following the herd;
Amit, whose brother Arun is struggling to win the approval of his mother for the Hindu girl he has chosen to marry; and Jas who tells us of his journey with these three, desperate to win their approval, desperate too for Samira,
a Muslim girl, which in this story can only have bad consequences. Together they cruise the streets in Amit's enhanced Beemer, making a little money changing the electronic fingerprints on stolen mobile phones, a scam that leads them into more dangerous waters.
Funny, crude, disturbing, written in the vibrant language of its protagonists – a mix of slang, Bollywood, texting, Hindu and bestrides gangster rap – ‘Nonconstant’ is about many things: tribalism, aggressive masculinity, integration, cross-cultural chirping techniques, the urban scene seeping into the mainstream, bling bling economics, ‘complicated family-related shit’. It is one of the most surprising British novels of recent years.