Ever puzzled what you’d do in case your musical hero received cancelled? This crushing state of affairs is delivered to life in a formidable first novel by Nicolas Padamsee (one of many Observer’s finest 2024 debut novelists). A nuanced and remarkably assured exploration of Britishness, poisonous masculinity and the pernicious pull of the far proper, England Is Mine charts a speedy descent into extremism fuelled by fandom and disillusionment.
David, one in all two most important characters, is a young person of Iranian heritage dwelling in east London. A social outcast who struggles together with his picture (bullies at sixth type name him “Make-up Boy”), he finds refuge within the music of Karl Williams, an outspoken solo artist who, throughout a present in Leeds, makes an Islamophobic remark about Muslim kids being withdrawn from an area main college due to LGBTQ educating. “Might it’s that possibly, possibly, Islam isn’t 100% suitable with western values?” he goads the group. “You inform me.” Whereas initially reticent, David feels that the general public backlash towards Williams is extreme. This place turns into extra entrenched after David is assaulted by two younger Muslims – one in all whom he is aware of from school – setting him on a darkish path that spirals in direction of disaster.
Padamsee tempers his depiction of radicalisation taking maintain in a novel that’s meticulously and sensitively paced. David’s story is interwoven with that of Hassan, a longtime member of a Muslim youth centre who is set to get into his first-choice college. As David strikes from taking part in Name of Responsibility on-line to frequenting neo-Nazi chatrooms, Hassan begins volunteering at his native mosque: “He remembers his profession adviser saying that volunteering expertise would assist his Ucas utility stand out.” The parallel lives of those two younger males dangle within the stability, converging in an act of racial hatred that’s unthinkable however inevitable.
England Is Mine presents a searing indictment of the factionalism and marginalisation that grip Twenty first-century Britain.
England Is Mine by Nicolas Padamsee is revealed by Profile (£16.99). To assist the Guardian and Observer order your copy at guardianbookshop.com. Supply fees could apply
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