Nalini Malani. Reverse painting on mylar. 2005

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nalini-malani

That’s Gautam Malkani, homeboy from Hounslow, ready to take off with his new book, Londonstani. Here’s what he has to say about a runway decorating his neighborhood:

With a plane roaring overhead every 60 seconds, it’s probably a good thing I decided to set ‘Londonstani’ in Hounslow rather than write it there.
While it’s easy to exaggerate the effect of having Heathrow Airport in your borough’s back yard, most locals learn to press a kind of instinctive pause button during conversation and thought. Combine that with the fact that ethnic minorities make up more than 60 per cent of the population in some wards and the area soon gives new meaning to the phrase ‘broken English’.

He was only talking to Time Out London, but he has the voice, doesn’t he?

I owe the above link and the others that follow to Uma at Indian Writing. Many thanks!

Malkani is being called “a Muslim Irvine Welsh.” That’s colorful, I guess, although harder to guess why a Muslim would have a Hindu name, and I am in agreement with the commentator at the Guardian who writes:

… if I hear the term “the new Zadie/Monica” one more time I may be forced to kill myself by banging my head against the pavement of Brick Lane. It’s something that young non-white authors are finding increasingly difficult to escape: the young half-Nigerian writer Diana Evans found herself tagged in the press as “the new Zadie” though her novel is an exploration of a twin sister’s suicide. Since publishing has in recent years become more publicity-driven, the first question from the putative bookseller is: “What is the book comparable to?” Consequently, diversity hasn’t been marketed with much diversity. “It makes sense in commercial terms to sell writers as ‘brands’,” says Denny. But Simon Prosser argues that “selling anybody as anybody else is misguided; they aren’t the new anybody else, they’re them.”

More on the language here. Also check out here. But away from the commentaries and talk about advances, here is an excerpt from the novel:

Serve him right he got his muthafuckin face fuck’d, shudn’t b callin me a paki, innit. After spittin his words out Hardjit stopped for a second, like he expected one of us to write them down or someshit. Then he adds an exclamation mark by kickin the white kid in the face again.

—Shudn’t b callin us pakis, innit, u dutty gora.

londonstani-gautam-malkani