Here are some nice and nasty things reviewers have said about Londonstani. Needless to say I’m being gentle on my ego by starting with some of the nice ones...
‘Londonstani is an enthralling book... Malkani really scores with his narrator, Jas, whose engaging banter provides the crucial lightness of touch for such an issue-laden novel, allowing Malkani to negotiate with skill and acuity the clashes between personal, parental and cultural ideology... And the real surprise comes with the final pages, in which the author deploys a shattering twist that maintains total narrative cogency while turning the entire book upside down. A bold and vigorous debut.’
- Independent on Sunday
‘Artful, thought-provoking and strikingly inventive. An impressive, in some respects brilliant, first novel. It is intelligent, keenly observed and, though never didactic, concerned in a moral sense with its characters' lives. Its specificity opens a window to a compelling view of things widely significant. "Londonstani" deserves a wide audience because it is one of those rare books that repays its reader with an engaging literary experience and thoughts about things that matter to us all.’
- Los Angeles Times
‘Malkani's debut novel displays all the bravado of his swaggering young protagonists... It's hard not to be dazzled by the way this novel hurtles us into the rudeboy scene... He demonstrates his sharp eye for the contradictions and absurdities of the pseudo-gangsta life these boys have fashioned for themselves... His writing achieves moments of real verve and power.’
- Washington Post
‘A compelling, impressively sustained... skilfully written and structured novel. The twist necessitates a re-questioning of everything you think you've gleaned from the previous pages. It will eviscerate your first reading of the book. It's simple, but not a gimmick - and is protected against that charge by a beautifully self-aware piece of writing, in which the only violence that truly convinces is that which befalls the narrator. Many of what initially seem to be faults are revealed to be strengths; yes, even the off-putting beginning. It's far from a cheery piece of work, but an exhilarating one. Books are, among a million other things, for entertainment. Malkani understands that, too.’
- The Daily Telegraph
‘Breathless, hilarious and convincing.’
- New York Times
‘Profane, outrageous, completely original, Londonstani is an explosive first novel... It’s a big book of tricks – plot twists are a major factor. But the biggest trick is a linguistic one... It is infintely readable... The book’s unique style and ability to thrust readers into its setting has garnered comparisons to Irvine Welsh’s Trainspotting. But Londonstani is much funnier, a devastating satire of male insecurity hiding inside middle-class alienation. Sensational’
- Now
‘Turned my scepticism upside down... Londonstani subtly explores the contradictions and complexities of relations within Britain's black and Asian communities. The tensions it highlights are not simply between communities of different identities and faiths--as was the case with the recent riots in Birmingham between Afro-Caribbean and Asian youths but between communities of the same faith... Londonstani was not what I
expected it to be. It bears little relation to the formulaic works one often comes across by Muslims, Asians and Africans, telling the stories of their emigration to Britain and their search for an identity. This is one of the most impressive things about the novel, and the most surprising. Londonstani is a book about many things, but it intends, above all, to show one thing: that being a young British Asian or African — whether you are
Muslim, Hindu or Sikh - is not about having a completely westernised identity and set of aspirations. Let's hope it is the first of many works to put such a message across’
– Rageh Omaar, New Statesman
‘Like a stinging slap in the face... A rollercoaster ride of teenage high jinks... The machismo of Hardjit, Jas and co is portrayed as a young male reaction to overbearingly dominant mothers and distant fathers, a theme pursued with great comic effect’
– Evening Standard, April 25th, 2006
‘An inadvertently gay, stupidly written tale of teenage inanity... senseless... implausible... Jas is an idiot. What is he trying to say? Am I supposed to care? He does indeed sound like a dick, all the time... His moronic inner monologue is sometimes astonishing but never interesting... None of the characters has depth or complexity, yet we are subjected to the blood-curdling triviality of their preoccupations... I initially thought this was all an Ali G-style spoof, given how daft it is... He writes in an almost impenetrable gibberish... Where did Malkani encounter kids as wholly subnormal as these? The trash that inhabit this novel apparently suffer from an identity crisis, using a plethora of labels to make sense of themselves. Try this one, guys: retards.’
- Nirpal Dhaliwal, Evening Standard, April 10th, 2006
‘What Malkani attempts to palm off here as keeping-it-real verisimilitude scans as eight-carat phoniness, and while the author fancies himself as a mimick of urban yoof-speak, comma there is a hollow ring to the Hounslow-born, Cambridge-educated, Creative Business editor of the Financial Times trying so self-consciously to appear, ahem, down with the kids... Readers must also contend with playground-level twitterings about various boys’ toys, especially cars, which are anthropomorphised and eroticised in a way that sounds like JG Ballard meets Pimp My Ride... Commissioning editors at Fourth Estate seem to have had their BS detectors turned off.’
- Sunday Times
‘Surely Malkani has set himself up for a fall given his age and job? What does he really know? So before dismissing it all as a sub Ali-G spoof, who better to ask than the teenagers in Hounslow themselves? [After testing out the book in Hounslow] it turns out Malkani does know what he’s talking about. The consensus from the teenagers was that these words are ‘real’ and this is how Hounslow teenagers speak. Some were at pains to point out that they didn’t use such expressions themselves - although their brothers and cousins did - but that, overall, Malkani had it spot-on... Londonstani is something special and very funny.’
- The Times
‘With street language and typical rudeboy speech, including the obligatory ‘innit’ and a liberal dose of swearing, it portrays the power struggle most youngsters were going through 10-15 years ago, but cleverly brings it forwards to the present with the stark reality of how people speak here.’
- Hounslow Chronicle
‘I love this book. Everybody that reads it is gonna be in stitches. It’s written in a way that young Asians speak right now and even if you’re not Asian you’re still gonna get it - this is what goes on.’
- Hard Kaur, BBC Radio Asian Network
‘The most misrepresented and unfairly treated book of 2006. This was a smart, linguistically inventive and very funny debut.’
- Times Literary Supplement
‘The cut and paste mentality that the boys use to create their identities leads to a beautiful, brilliant Frankenstein’s monster of cultural demands and desires’
– The Good Book Guide
‘It’s not an easy feat to carry off slangy dialect, an authentic voice for your narrator, and a surprise ending all in your first novel. Gautam Malkani’s Londonstani does all that, for which it should be commended... One of Malkani’s great successes is how he transitions us slowly from Jas’s toughguy front to his true centre. There isn’t a moment when we’re not seeing the desi world, these questions of honour and these cultural clashes, from Jas’s eyes – even when he’s obscuring his own cognizance of it behind rudeboy language. It’s a remarkable maintenance of character in a first novel...In the category of debut novelists who carry so strong and distinct a voice from so authentic a source, Malkani is in a rarefied crowd’
– Gothamist
‘A novel that is exceptionally funny and heartrendingly moving... He has balanced academic, satirical and representative aims in a killer piece of dazzingly original fiction... There is a conscious arc in the book from ethnicity wielded as a proxy for masculinity to the subculture being a proxy for the ethnicity... Londonstani’s tremendous energy and vitality stems from the fact that it does not simplify complexities into black and white and brown, but thrives in the grey areas, where values are tested, questioned, set against each other.’
- The Herald
‘Malkani has effectively dropped a sociological bombshell with the potential to blow apart the bland assumptions about ‘ethnic minorities’ so easily made by officially multicultural Britain.’
- Times of India
‘Its plot may seem superficially teenage, but this is an ambitiously literary novel. Malkani is out to capture a subculture that not only has its own language but also its own punctuation - Londonstani is a bold debut, brimming with energy and authenticity.'
- Observer
‘A vibrant linguistic mash-up.’
- Vogue
'A bhuna of gang-fights, inter-faith romance and organised crime, and the dizzying humour is sharp, clever and convincing...' - Independent
‘The incessant blend of boyish patois and text-message speak is captivating.’
- New Yorker Magazine
‘Undoubtedly the biggest British Asian novel of the millennium... Far from pandering to the white-liberal reader that finds the ghetto nature of disaffected urban Asian youths rather quaint, Gautam has written Londonstani form the perspective of an Asian in awe of the gang culture directed at Asians who live that life...The simple fact is, Londonstani is a book that appeals to anyone who feels isolated from the tag their parents gave them and long to be part of something that makes them feel stronger. It’s idiotic to complain that it doesn’t represent the Asian community or that it puts us in a bad light – it’s about a group of kids trying to find their way in a country that’s lost its direction. Have a read of it. You might just want to hug a rudeboy afterwards’
– Asiana magazine
‘Sharp, slangy, innovatively conceived.’
- Arena magazine
‘Powerful... Lives up to the hype... Malkani knows the desi world well... A thrilling piece of writing, on a purely linguistic level, and in terms of plot, which had this reader burning the midnight oil’ – Time Out
‘Written in an ingeniously communicable melange of slang... It’s shocking, ball-grabbing stuff and not designed for the weak-hearted... The most powerful strand of this book is the enormity of peer pressure and the overwhelming expectations of burgeoning masculinity’
– Financial Times
‘Gripping stuff... both disturbing and compelling. Malkani skilfully highlights the intersection of machismo and consumerism.’
– The Guardian
‘A lively tale. He also captures the soul of a subculture that has spread far beyond his hometown, a movement that, as the author illustrates, has much to do with a second-generation-immigrant compulsion to assert identity... Londonstani- with all its bling, gore, graphic language- will get the kids' attention. In a language they understand, innit’
– Time magazine
‘A wry look at assimilation -- or, often, the lack thereof’
– Wall Street Journal
‘Laugh-out-loud... Londonstani tackles serious issues of race, identity and misguided adolescence, and for that it has to be lauded. However, with its comic narrative delivered by the geeky Jas, the end product has a soufflé lightness’
– South China Morning Post
‘Deciphering the multiple layers of this first novel offers a worthy reward, both in its delicious surprise ending and in the deeper meaning it imparts to easy catchwords such as "assimilation" and "multiculturalism."... What makes "Londonstani" a standout is the detailed depiction of how these young men think, feel, and act’
– The Christian Science Monitor
‘Scholars have written reams on the elusive nature of identity and the pitfalls of pigeonholing people. In a delightful twist, Malkani treads a journalist's path and shows it instead of saying it’
– The Hindu
‘Londonstani is a provocative force of a novel that serves as a remarkable introduction to London's new middle class’ - Calgary Herald
‘Flags an ironic and even blackly comic awareness of what acts of aggression reveal about aggressors and what the rhetoric of tribal difference may hide’
– The Australian
‘This novel shines with attitude... Londonstani exudes a charming, original energy... As a contemporary cultural artefact, Londonstani is second to
none’
– The Sydney Morning Herald
‘A controversial and jarring look at the way race and identity politics operate in contemporary urban space... In its frank interrogation of racial categories and its adept play with language, Londonstani is a compelling debut that demands a response from its readers’
– The Globe and Mail
‘Malkani gives voice to this generation of young people... ambivalent to and at times even scornful of British establishment norms. These are people who are talked about often – usually in the context of crime, immigration, race or fundamentalism – but whom we rarely hear talk... Malkani is interested in youth who are socially disaffected and sexually distracted, culturally integrated and autonomous, indifferent in their religious observance and aggressive in their tribal affiliations. .. His London is not a city of countless terror cells about to be torn apart by extremism but a parallel universe where non-whites are so tightly interwoven into the fabric that to try and pick them out would make the whole weave unravel’
– Gary Younge, The Nation
‘In this exuberantly energetic first novel, damnation may be clothed in Kenzo but it is vulgar nevertheless... Narrator Jas is his trump card, who in the end provides, like The Sixth Sense without the ghost, a surprise rarely seen in fiction, especially a literary one like this... makes even the pathetic quite witty. The book's bad-boy language-a cocktail of bhangra, text messages and gangsta rap-gets a poetic rhythm as Jas
accelerates the narrative. In the end, it is not a soulless book populated by stereotypes. The bling-bling cleverness is a deception, and it works beautifully here. The absence of essential goodness is not an Asian inadequacy. It is the fallout of self-conscious assertion: you don't have to wear your coloured Englishness as a badge of acquired honour. The
rudeboys of Londonstani, after all, don't have complete copyright over the desi identity. They are plain rude, and Malkani doesn't deploy ancestral back-stories or cultural traits to make them essentially Asian. Jas will have a more convincing explanation, which may even sound like a moral fable with a touch of the tragic. When redemption makes an
appearance on the last page, you realise it is very much an English novel about English attitudes and aspirations. There is nothing exotic about it any longer. That is what Malkani tells us with so much smartboy brio’
– India Today