SHORTLISTED FOR THE 2024 BETTY TRASK PRIZE

NOMINATED FOR THE 2025 GORDON BURN PRIZE

A politically engaged, urgently plotted coming-of-age thriller with a wicked satirical streak

OBSERVER

A brilliant dissection of race, identity, masculinity and extremism

MONICA ALI

Riveting ... A blistering and prescient novel

FERDIA LENNON, author of Glorious Exploits

In an East London borough, two second-generation immigrants search for a sense of identity and belonging amid a wave of online radicalisation and extremism. College student David survives through music and multiplayer video games. Attacked by his classmates for the controversial on-stage comments of his musical idol Karl Williams, he retreats into an online world of far-right ideologies and toxic masculinity. Hassan, too, is alienated from his friends, who drink, smoke weed and mock his volunteer work at the local mosque. As the young men struggle to find a path through a hostile-seeming world, their fates become tragically, catastrophically intertwined.