Koushik Banerjea Livres

Life on a London council estate leads the entrepreneurial Conrad on a conflicted journey between his ambition, his loyalty to his Jamaican nan, and his need to redeem himself. The suppressed scars of a life under the Spanish dictator Franco resurface in Laura's traumatic coming of age. Seemingly comfortable British Indian girl Roxy wants something different, but isn't sure what. Then there is D, the inner city boffin looking for more than the dubious distinction of being the younger brother of an accomplished thief. Like the others, D is not content with his allotted role in life. He'd rather be a 'category unknown'Four very different characters, one lifetime, the old certainties gone. And as the threads holding their identities together unravel, these intertwined lives are propelled into the heart of their troubled times.Spanning the decades from the rise of Thatcher in the late 1970s to the fall of Lehmann Brothers in 2008, Category Unknown is a darkly comic portrait of lives in miniature flailing around the edges of the bigger questions. Who am I? How did I get here? Why am I kitted out in counterfeit sportswear? At the book's core is the simple premise when life is precarious, perhaps the greatest freedom of all resides in refusing to be categorised.

The three R's: routemasters, reading, rioting. Intoning this mantra K., a bookish young boy, ducks the fare but not the issues in this darkly comic coming-of-age tale largely unfolding in a city and an era where everything: culture, people, even the local architecture, appears to be in open revolt. It's 1977 and the Queen's Silver Jubilee and, along with the pomp, it's punk that's in full swing. South of the river, the polyester-clad natives are in uproar. They don't like the kids with colourful streaks in their hair, and they most certainly don't like the ones with colour in their skin. K. is one of those kids, marooned with his family in a sea of hostility. His parents, both refugees, view that as a small price to pay for starting over after the mayhem of Indian Partition. When threats are made and bricks start to fly, long-buried demons of the past resurface. And as summer wears on, unresolved issues culminate in a grim local dance of law and disorder. If England was dreaming, it's wide awake now. Festooned with streamers and safety pins, while in its shadows something primal has begun to stir. London in extremis. Just below the surface, and sometimes not even that far, Another Kind of Concrete.