Londonstani

My sister sent me this book quite some time ago but I finally fit it in between book club books. I loved it. Here's a blurb from Wikipedia:

The novel is narrated by Jas, a youth who, until recently, was a timid but high-achieving student, but has lately become a member of a gang of "desis" or "rudeboys". Hardjit is the leader of the gang, a wealthy, self-confident, but violent young Sikh; the other two members of the gang are Ravi and Amit. The boys are actually all middle-class "mummy's boys", but they play at being tough thugs. They also run an illegitimate cellphone reprogamming operation.

At first it was tough reading because the author writes the spoken parts of the story in the slang these "rudeboys" speak. There is a glossary in the back which is very helpful, and the more you read the less you need to check it. I'm not sure that's so good since that means that you, the reader, now knows a lot of slang rudeboy cuss words! The story takes place in London as the title would suggest, so there's a bit of British slang as well. Once you get past the language issue the amazing story unfolds. One of the social issues that clearly comes through is the way these UK-born boys try very hard not to assimilate into white UK culture. They work hard at promoting segregation in a way that their parents, who are foreign-born, do not. They hate their parents for trying to be more white than Asian.

The end of the story has such a surprising twist that it comes out of nowhere, and I found myself going back up a few sentences to check the accuracy of what I just read. It was an incredible ending and I absolutely loved it. If you read the plot summary on Wiki it will tell you this ending, so beware.

So, here's a sample of rudeboy speak: "U khota, we ain't bein called no f***in Paki by u or by any otha gora, u get me? U bhanchod b callin us lot Paki one more time an I swear we'll cut'chyu up, innit. Yeh, blud, safe."

Read at your own risk (but do read it!)