PRAISE FOR
IN OUR MAD AND FURIOUS CITY
“This is cracking. Original, honest voices and a vivid portrayal of a London rarely seen in literature.”
—Paula Hawkins, author of The Girl on the Train
“The voices and the language are stunning … The narrative and energy hooked me right from the start and never let go. It really is a very special book—the book we’ve all been waiting for.”
—Gautam Malkani, author of Londonstani
“What a voice. What an ear for language. No mean feat to capture the street, the nuance of black experience, the architecture of so many different lives. It’s a brave and original piece of work.”
—Kit de Waal, author of The Trick to Time
“Gritty, grotesque; graceful and beautiful. This is the London that we call home.”
—JJ Bola, author of No Place to Call Home
“A blazing, swaggering, polyphonic debut. Here is London through the eyes of those with ‘elsewhere in their blood.’ Guy Gunaratne has a ventriloquist’s command of voice, a filmmaker’s eye, and talent to burn.”
—Simon Wroe, author of Here Comes Trouble
“A vivid and affecting account of estate life, both blighted by frustration and elevated by dreams we can all recognize and share. Guy Gunaratne’s characters are drawn with compassion and flair, and I was captivated by their humanity.”
—Stephen Kelman, author of Pigeon English
“An ambitious mosaic of virtuosic ventriloquism … An inner city novel for our times, exploring the endurance of social trauma across generations, and conveying the agony and energy of the marginalised, the outsider, and the oppressed.”
—Judges’ comment for the 2018 Man Booker Prize long list
“[A] blazing polyphonic debut.”
—The Guardian
“A blistering debut unlike anything I’ve read before. This is a powerful, raw, yet heartrending account of forty-eight hours on a London estate.”
—Justine Willett, BBC
“The language is virtuosic throughout while remaining largely true to each narrator’s first-person voice, replete with their own distinctive slang … An impressive feat.”
—Ellen Wiles, The Times Literary Supplement
“The prose remains alive, alert and subtly integrated, with various accents and non-standard Englishes raising themselves up to the same very high literary watermark … Gunaratne is no doubt on his way.”
—Jonathan McAloon, The Irish Times
“In Our Mad and Furious City is fraught and heartbreaking at times, with a biting, in-your-face clarity to it that you can’t ignore. It’s a searing marvel of a novel.”
—Ella Walker, The Irish News
“This novel is a love letter to the language of London’s streets and to its people, but also a blistering look at a city on the edge that’ll sweep you up until you reach the book’s breathless, devastating conclusion.”
—Sarah Shaffi, Stylist
“A timely read, addressing the urgent questions of our divided society. We’re sure [Gunaratne] is set for big things.”
—Layla Haidrani, Metro
A NOTE ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Guy Gunaratne was born in London in 1984. He previously worked as a journalist and as a documentary filmmaker covering human rights stories around the world. He divides his time between London and Malmö, Sweden. You can sign up for email updates here.
CONTENTS
Title Page
Copyright Notice
Dedication
Prologue
Part One: Mongrel
Estate
Square
Ends
Part Two: Brother
Fanatic
Shame
Defilement
Part Three: Blood
Freedom
Faces
Fury
Echoes
Epilogue
Acknowledgments
Praise for In our Mad and Furious City
A Note About the Author
Copyright
MCD × FSG Originals
Farrar, Straus and Giroux
175 Varick Street, New York 10014
Copyright © 2018 by Guy Gunaratne
All rights reserved
Originally published in 2018 by Tinder Press, Great Britain
Published in the United States by MCD × FSG Originals / Farrar, Straus and Giroux
First American edition, 2018
E-book ISBN: 978-0-374-72036-0
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