In Our Mad and Furious City

Guy Gunaratne's debut novel is out from Headline on Thursday 19th April

In Our Mad and Furious City tells the tale of 48 hours in the life of a council estate, Stones Estate, through the eyes of different young people who inhabit the estate from different cultural and religious backgrounds - Selvon, Ardan and Yusuf.

Each young man has a story to tell, and they all have aspirations to better themselves be it through sporting or musical endeavours; the young men are successors of the British Angry Young man of the 1960s - those created by the society around them and taking the influence of that society to craft a new image or mindset.

Gunaratne has crafted a brave, socially aware and prescient novel; one that is rich in the history of London - and to a greater extent British - immigration, a place that is full of diversity but unwilling to embrace these social changes as it threatens the norm.

It is aware of where it comes from, being written by a member of an ethnic group; it is brave in the sense that during his debut he has decided to write from many different voices. Apart from the three young men we encounter mostly; he also writes in the voice of females and elders.

This spell-binding novel is dripping with the location in which it is set, unafraid to show the world as it is now, a world that is fearful, paranoid and angry.

It will be a book that will be made into a mini-series no doubt, yet it should be read by any and all as it is a novel of such supreme confidence and certainty unlike any debut novel you would have encountered in recent times.

IN OUR MAD AND FURIOUS CITY is released by Headline on Thursday 19th April