´A debut collection of such precocity and aplomb that it stands comparison to the likes of Junot Diaz and Bryan Washington´ Observer
´Moving, truthful, straight from the heart´ Neel Mukherjee
´These are excellent stories, told with skill and verve´ Jon McGregor
Here, beneath the planes circling Heathrow, various lives connect. Priti speaks English and her nani Punjabi. Without Priti´s mum around they struggle to make a shared language. Not far away, Chetan and Aanshi´s relationship shifts when a woman leaves her car in their drive but never returns to collect it. Gujan´s baba steps out of his flat above the chicken shop for the first time in years to take his grandson on a bicycle tour of the old and changed neighbourhood. And returning home after dropping out of university, Lata grapples with a secret about her estranged family friend, now a chart-topping rapper in a crisis of confidence.
Mapping an area of West London, these stories chart a wider narrative about the movement of multiple generations of immigrants. In acts of startling imagination, Gurnaik Johal´s debut brings together the past and the present, the local and the global, to show the surprising ways we come together.