A debut novel, this is the story of a young boy, Harrison Opoku who has recently moved from Ghana to live in an English inner-city housing estate. Told from Harrison's perspective, it is a tale of innocence and experience, hope and reality, as he absorbs the elements of his new life and learns the tricks of inner-city survival.
The book was nominated for the Man Booker Prize in 2011 (won by Julian Barnes' "The Sense of an Ending" which we read last month).
It will therefore be interesting to put ourselves in the judges shoes (anyone for being Stella Rimington please stand up please!) and compare the books against each other. We should also ask ourselves do award-winning or nominated books really indicate excellent books and will this prove as contraversial a story as some of the other books we've discussed? I am sure there will be much to chew over.....
The Author
Stephen Kelman was born in Luton in 1976. After finishing his degree he had a varied career working as a warehouse operative, a careworker, and in marketing and local government administration - providing much material for writing! He decided to focus on writing seriously in 2005, and has since completed several screenplays.
More Details
Find out about the book at http://www.pigeonenglish.co.uk/ and about the Man Booker Prize.
No comments:
Post a Comment