In Our Mad and Furious City: A Novel Audiobook

Quotes

• “This is cracking. Original, honest voices and a vivid portrayal of a London rarely seen in literature.”

  — Paula Hawkins, #1 New York Times bestselling author

• “Gunaratne, with a gift for characterization, presents the kinds of Londoners not often seen in contemporary fiction.”

  — New York Times Book Review

• “[A] blazing polyphonic debut.”

  — Guardian (London)

• “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.”

  — BBC

• “A searing marvel of a novel.”

  — Belfast Telegraph

• “Already hailed as a modern masterpiece, this timely and authentic portrayal of life for young men living on our city estates is as mesmerizing as it is vital.”

  — Heat

• "Narrators Ben Bailey Smith and Lou Marie Kerr expertly intertwine multiple first-person points of view in this gritty debut audiobook...Listeners unfamiliar with the dialects--Irish, Jamaican, and British among them--will be especially buoyed by the power of the performances.

  — AudioFile, Earphones Award Winner

• 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

• 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

• 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

• A blazing, swaggering, polyphonic debut. Here is London through the eyes of those 'with elsewhere in their blood'. Gunaratne has a ventriloquist's command of voice, a film-maker's eye, and talent to burn.—Simon Wroe, author of Here Comes Trouble

• Both blighted by frustration and elevated by dreams we can all recognize and share. Guy's characters are drawn with compassion and flair, and I was captivated by their humanity.

  — Stephen Kelman, author of Pigeon English

• A beautiful, fierce storm of a book, full of courage and hope

  — Jackie Morris, author of The Lost Words

• Our favorite debut of 2018. Gunaratne draws on growing up in north-west London in this tale of 48 hours on a council estate, where three young boys dream of escaping.

  — Glamour (UK)

• In Our Mad and Furious City is fraught and heartbreaking at the same time, with a biting, in-your-face clarity to it that you can't ignore. It's a searing marvel of a novel.

  — Belfast Telegraph

• Already hailed as a modern masterpiece, this timely and authentic portrayal of life for young men living on our city estates is as mesmerizing as it is vital.

  — Heat (UK)

• 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 . . . What you are left with . . . is a prose that benefits from being read aloud. But more so, a prose that just plain deserves to be read.

  — Irish Times

• 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.

  — Stylist (UK)

• A blistering debut unlike anything I've read before. This is a powerful, raw, yet heartrending account of 48 hours on a London estate

  — BBC

• A timely read, addressing the urgent questions of our divided society. We're sure Guy is set for big things

  — Metro (UK)

• [A] blazing polyphonic debut.

  — Guardian (UK)