Newly arrived from Ghana with his mother and older sister, eleven-year-old Harrison Opoku lives on the ninth floor of a block of flats on a London housing estate. The second best runner in the whole of Year 7, Harri races through his new life in his personalised trainers - the Adidas stripes drawn on with marker pen - blissfully unaware of the very real threat all around him. With equal fascination for the local gang - the Dell Farm Crew - and the pigeon who visits his balcony, Harri absorbs the many strange elements of his new life in England: watching, listening, and learning the tricks of inner-city survival. But when a boy is knifed to death on the high street and a police appeal for witnesses draws only silence, Harri decides to start a murder investigation of his own. In doing so, he unwittingly endangers the fragile web his mother has spun around her family to try and keep them safe.
'Simultaneously accurate and fantastical, this boy's love letter to the world made me laugh and tremble all the way through. Pigeon English is a triumph' Emma Donoghue, author of Room 'Pigeon English is a book to fall in love with: a funny book, a true book, a shattering book' Erica Wagner, The Times 'Stephen Kelman's [first novel] has a powerful story, a pacy plot and engaging characters. It paints a vivid portrait with honesty, sympathy and wit, of a much neglected milieu, and it addresses urgent social questions. It is horrifying, tender and funny ... Brilliant' Daily Telegraph 'The humour, the resilience, the sheer ebullience of its narrator - a hero for our times - should ensure the book becomes, deservedly, a classic' Daily Mail
Shortlisted for Desmond Elliott Prize 2011 and Man Booker Prize for Fiction 2011 and Galaxy National Book Awards: Galaxy New Writer of the Year 2011.
Title: Pigeon English
Subtitle:
Contributors:
By (author)
Stephen Kelman
ISBN 13: 9781408815687
ISBN 10: 1408815680
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing PLC
Imprint: Bloomsbury Publishing PLC
Publication Date: 1/04/2012
Place of Publication:
London,
United Kingdom
Edition:
BIC Subjects:
General & literary fiction
Dewey Classification:
823.92
(DC23)
NBS Classification: General & Literary Fiction
Format: Paperback
Pages: 288
Height: 198mm
Width: 129mm
Thickness: 17mm