Itemize Containing Books Londonstani
| Title | : | Londonstani |
| Author | : | Gautam Malkani |
| Book Format | : | Hardcover |
| Book Edition | : | Special Edition |
| Pages | : | Pages: 342 pages |
| Published | : | June 22nd 2006 by Penguin Press (first published 2006) |
| Categories | : | Contemporary. Novels. Fiction. Literature |
Gautam Malkani
Hardcover | Pages: 342 pages Rating: 3.34 | 1481 Users | 194 Reviews
Commentary Concering Books Londonstani
Jas is in trouble. Because of who he is-an eighteen-year-old Asian living in London. Because of the gang he hangs out with. And because of the woman he fancies, Samira, who Jas shouldn't have taken a shining to because she is, as his pals point out, not one of his own. He's in trouble because his education, never mind his career, is going nowhere. And he's fallen into the schemes, games and prejudices of his friends on the streets of the big western city in which he lives. But Jas's main trouble is Jas himself, and he doesn't even know the trouble he's in, and try as hard as he does, he's failing to make sense of what it is to be young, male and what you might say is Indostani in a city that professes to be a melting pot but is a city of racial and religious exclusion zones. Without his parents' aspirations to assimilate, without the gifts of his more academically accomplished contemporaries, Jas is a young man without a survival plan to get by in the big city. He's out of touch, an anachronism posing as young man who's up-to-date, living free-style, making things up as he goes along in suburbs of West London. Gautam Malkani's extraordinary comic novel portrays the lives of young Muslim, Sikh, and Hindu men in the ethnically charged enclave of one of the biggest western cities, London. A world usually-but wrongly-portrayed as the breeding ground for Islamic militants is, in actuality, a world of money (sometimes), flash cars (usually), cell phones (all the time), rap music and MTV, as well as rivalries and feuds, and the small-time crooks who exploit them. In Malkani's hilarious depiction of multiculturalism, race is no more than a proxy for masculinity, or lack of masculinity, among young men struggling to get by in a remorseless city. Just as Martin Amis and Irving Welsh captured the mood and the ethos of the eighties and nighties, twenty-nine-year-old Gautam Malkani brilliantly evokes the life of immigrants who are not immigrants in Londonstani, bringing an entirely fresh perspective to contemporary fiction as he does so.
Identify Books As Londonstani
| Original Title: | Londonstani |
| ISBN: | 1594200971 (ISBN13: 9781594200977) |
| Edition Language: | English |
| Setting: | United Kingdom |
| Literary Awards: | Βραβείο Λογοτεχνικής Μετάφρασης ΕΚΕΜΕΛ Nominee for Αγγλόφωνη Λογοτεχνία (2008) |
Rating Containing Books Londonstani
Ratings: 3.34 From 1481 Users | 194 ReviewsAssess Containing Books Londonstani
Really not sure about that ending, and parts of it dragged for no real reason, but on the whole I enjoyed myself (especially for second-hand novel picked up on a whim). The toxic masculinity was wearying, and I still don't know in what sense Malkani may be termed a comic writer, but his sense of pace and character interaction kept me reading.Londonstani is is another in a long line of books about one of literatures favourite topics; teenage angst and the problems of fitting in, making friends and finding your place in a changing society. Oh and of course theres a boy meets girl boy loses girl line running through as well. Its just this ones a bit different because its set in the multi-cultural environs of Hounslow an area of suburban London that's highly dependent on Heathrow airport and rather more middle-class than the
Found this from an excerpt in Rotten English by Dohra Ahmad, a collection of fiction and poetry showcasing vernacular/dialect. This novel does such an interesting job using urban English slang and immigrant Indian and Pakistani dialect and languages. Even better it uses all of that to comment on the role of language in identity and power in society. The first part reminded me of The Outsiders by S.E. Hinton because it's about a tough gang of teen boys that leads to a big fight, but it takes an
Ok so the ending was a bit tacked on but it made me think back alot to his relationship with his parents and how they related to him. I loved the slang - have a ton of British cousins so it was like hanging with the family. He does go a bit too heavy on sexualizing every woman he saw but it worked well with the intense aggression and frustration and mixed up with the pace of the language it was very Clockwork Orangish. I liked how the new rudeboy persona Jas was trying to grow into would fade
this was sometimes a hard read. especially at first the language influenced my opinion of the book, which is on the whole rather interesting. i think, though, that it could have been shorter, especially in the middle part, and sometimes the main character's monologues get to me, they're too long.i suppose one of the problem is also that - obviously, due to the "rudeboy" topic, there's waaay to much testosterone in this book for me, topic-wise and also in the way people and things are described,
Although normally I hate dialect- I love London slang... innit? This book was great. Fun and exciting. I enjoyed learning all about Desi culture while traveling through India!
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