In Our Mad and Furious City by Guy Gunaratane

While I still have three of the Booker Prize long listed books to go after this one, this is the year that sees me reading the most nominees in the shortest period of time.  There are other great book awards, and I really do follow them, but the Booker Prize remains for me the one where I find every book is well written and makes me think.

This book reflects a 48 hour period of time in London through the eyes of five residents.  These characters — a group of young men and their parents — live in and around council estates. They all have an immigrant point of view, a sense of otherness about them,  and an intimate knowledge of a history of colonial violence. When a fanatical recent convert to Islam hacks an off-duty soldier to death in the street (echoing an actual event), the young men are startled by a sense they could identify with the killer. He wore the same sneakers they do. He spoke the same slang.

Yusuf, the son of Pakistani immigrants, is doing his best to avoid the attention of local Muslim extremists hoping to recruit him. His knowledge of Islam comes mainly from Nas lyrics, and he would like to keep it that way. He is happiest at the football pitch with his mates: Ardan, a would-be rapper whose mother, Caroline, fled Northern Ireland during the Troubles; and Selvon, an obsessively disciplined athlete desperate to escape the neighborhood. Selvon’s father, Nelson — mute and wheelchair-bound — is the historical consciousness of the novel; he was part of the “Windrush generation,” the Caribbean workers enlisted to rebuild Britain after World War II.  It is through these eyes that we come to see a London that is grittier than what the average tourist passing through is likely to perceive.