Guy Gunaratne launched onto the literary scene with the multi-award nominated Our Mad and Furious City. It was one of my favourite novels of the year, and one I will return to again in the future. Expectation for his follow-up - Mister, Mister - therefore was high, and so could easily have disappointed. At first this novel appears very different in tone and style to his debut - our narrator, Yahya Bas, is in a detention centre, and is writing the story of his life. It is unravelled slowly, in small chunks, and builds as it goes into a story of a war, conflict, extremism and more. Themes which haunted the edges of Our Mad and Furious City are bought into focus here.

I will admit Mister, Mister took longer to grip me than Our Mad and Furious City did - the first twenty pages I wasn't sure, and thought perhaps it was a little bit of a misfire - but the more I read, the more I engaged, and I wolfed down the final third in one breathless sitting. This, then, is another very good novel from Guy Gunaratne, and I eagerly await his next to see where he goes next.

Thank you to Netgalley and the publishers for the ARC.

A book about belonging and living in a special city like London. Fragmentary, hard to follow but also a book that I wanted to keep on reading as I found it fascinating.
Recommended.
Many thanks to the publisher for this ARC, all opinions are mine