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“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
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“Gunaratne, with a gift for characterization, presents the kinds of Londoners not often seen in contemporary fiction.”
— New York Times Book Review
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“[A] blazing polyphonic debut.”
— Guardian (London)
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“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
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“A searing marvel of a novel.”
— Belfast Telegraph
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“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
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"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
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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
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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
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Gritty, grotesque; graceful and beautiful. This is the London that we call home.
— JJ Bola, author of No Place to Call Home
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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
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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
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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
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A beautiful, fierce storm of a book, full of courage and hope
— Jackie Morris, author of The Lost Words
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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)
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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
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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)
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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
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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)
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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
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A timely read, addressing the urgent questions of our divided society. We're sure Guy is set for big things
— Metro (UK)
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[A] blazing polyphonic debut.
— Guardian (UK)