The One Who Wrote Destiny

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Pub Date 5 Apr 2018 | Archive Date 28 Mar 2018

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Description

** Please note - these are uncorrected proof pages and changes may be made before the book is printed **

A big-hearted, utterly charming carousel of a novel about three generations of the same family, riven by feuds and falling-outs, united by fates and fortunes.

Mukesh has just moved from Kenya to the drizzly northern town of Keighley. He was expecting fame, fortune, the Rolling Stones and a nice girl, not poverty, loneliness and racism. Still, he might not have found Keith Richards, but he did find the girl.

Neha is dying. Lung cancer, a genetic gift from her mother and an invocation to forge a better relationship with her brother and her widowed father before it's too late. The problem is, her brother is an unfunny comedian and her idiot father is a first-generation immigrant who moved to Keighley of all places.

Rakesh is grieving. He lost his mother and his sister to the same illness, and his career as a comedian is flat-lining. Sure, his sister would have claimed that it was because he was simply unfunny, but he can't help feel that there is more to it than that - more to do with who he is and where he comes from rather than the content of his jokes.

Ba has never looked after her two young grandchildren before. After her daughter died, her useless son-in-law dumped them on her doorstep for a month and now she has to try and work out how to bond with two children who are used England, not to the rhythms of Kenya...

** Please note - these are uncorrected proof pages and changes may be made before the book is printed **

A big-hearted, utterly charming carousel of a novel about three generations of the same family...


Available Editions

EDITION Hardcover
ISBN 9781786492784
PRICE £12.99 (GBP)

Average rating from 18 members


Featured Reviews

The One Who Wrote Destiny is a compelling novel about three generations of one family and their destinies, successes, and failures. It opens with Mukesh, who moves from Kenya to Keighley in the 1960s expecting to find a rock ’n’ roll lifestyle and instead finds a foreign and strange place, racism, and the love of his life. Neha, Mukesh’s daughter, is a logical computer programmer and she’s also dying whilst trying to avoid telling her father or her twin brother, Rak. Rak’s a stand up comedian who is facing the fact it might not be his jokes, but who he is that is causing his career problems. And finally, Ba meets her young grandchildren for the first time and has to care for them, but Neha and Rak are used to England, not Kenya, and Ba is haunted by the deaths in her family.

The characters are endearing and interesting, reflecting on their personal situations and also on more systematic issues around race, immigration, and difference. The novel is held together by the stories and certainties that families hold close, for example their tendency to die of certain things or their belief in something or another being their destiny. Neha’s portion of the narrative is perhaps the most engrossing, with her specific view of the world causing her to try and organise her family’s deaths in categories whilst dealing with her family, her cancer diagnosis, and her almost-romance with a girl in her local bar. Both Neha and Rak’s sections of the story are set in the modern day and this allows Shukla to highlight different forms of oppression and cultural identity today, from comedy panel shows to tautology.

This is a novel that is both crucial and heartwarming, with great characters and a carefully woven narrative. It foregrounds the importance of language and place in a variety of ways, from the languages characters do and don’t speak to the ways people frame their lives and their homes using words. and raises important points that arise in the lives of its characters. It is undoubtably a big novel for 2018 that is current and clever.

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