Description

‘Enthralling’ Guardian Culture Preview
‘A quicksilver astonishment of a book. Just read it’ Kiran Millwood Hargrave
‘A vital novel of newness and nowness’ Raymond Antrobus
‘A rollercoaster coming of age picaresque’ Observer
A New Statesman, Vogue, Guardian and Big Issue 2023 Fiction Pick

Idiot, poet, jihadist, son. Who is Yahya Bas? An exuberantly imaginative novel of Britishness and unbelonging from the prizewinning author of In Our Mad and Furious City.

When Yahya Bas finds himself in a UK detention centre after fleeing the conflict in Syria, he has many questions to face. What was he doing in the desert? Why does he hate this country? Why did he write the incendiary verses which turned him into an online sensation and a media pariah?

Mister, his interrogator, wants to keep him locked up. So he decides to tell his life story. On his own terms.
Following a child that East Ham made who becomes the unwitting voice of a generation, Mister, Mister is also the story of a quest for a father and the discovery of another way to live in the shadow of war. Bracing, tender, exuberantly imaginative, this is a novel that only Guy Gunaratne could have written.

Publisher Review

This devastating new novel from Guy Gunaratne confirms them as a writer at the top of their game. They balance an experimental structure with an indelible voice, exploring global, social politics and resolve with ease. Their use of language, precision, thoughtfulness and humanity, make this is the book you will all be reading in 2023 — Nikesh Shukla Gunaratne offers us the study of a young man navigating many identities while searching for security and selfhood. Mister, Mister is a modern testimony of the “British / other” subject as well as an invitation for us, readers, lovers of stories to be defined on our own terms. This is a vital novel of newness and nowness that testifies to the power of fiction that seeks truth
— — Raymond Antrobus Such a sharp and clever book that absolutely refuses easy interpretation. It’s about language and faith and extremism and ideas of home and identity and freedom. But also about the opposite of all that – an undoing of identity. One of those really refreshing books that truly doesn’t feel like anything I’ve read before, and one I’m still thinking about — Anna James