Forest Gate: A Novel - Softcover

Akinti, Peter

Softcover

ISBN 10: 143917217X ISBN 13: 9781439172179

Publisher: Free Press, 2010

Synopsis

Very near fine in illustrated wrappers (a new copy, but with a remainder line.) First edition - First US printing, a trade paperback original. First novel by this young author, of Nigerian ancestry, raised in Forest Gate, London and now living in New York. A graphic, poetic and shattering story set among young Somalian refugees in the slums of London. Although drugs play a very significant role in the novel, Akinti wants to show that the tragedy of young men dying is about much more than that. This edition includes a reading guide and a question and answer section with the author. 210 pp.

About this title

About the Author

Peter Akinti was a seventies child, born of Nigerian ancestry, in London. He read Law at a London University. He has written for the Guardian, and worked for four years at HM Treasury Chambers before founding and editing Untold Magazine for five years. Untold was the first independent British magazine for black men and had a wealth of gifted contributors from all over the diaspora. Peter spent eighteen months in Nigeria, running a restaurant, beer parlour and cinema in Ondo Town, Southwest Nigeria. He currently lives in Brooklyn.  Forest Gate is his first novel.

Reviews

Akinti's raw and riveting debut novel begins with Ashvin, an angry teenage Somali refugee, and his best friend, James, on opposite rooftops in the slums of East London preparing to hang themselves in a suicide pact. Ashvin leaps, unable to bear the reality of his own life—his activist parents murdered in Somalia; his brutal rape at the hands of Ethiopian soldiers; the constant harassment by London police and his schoolmates; the endless battles he will face as a black man in England. He leaves behind Meina, the beloved older sister he had always tried to protect. James, a lonely, studious teen, the baby of the drug-dealing Morrison clan, whose brothers are dehumanized, violent criminals, desperately wants to escape the family business, but he can't imagine a way out. When James jumps, but survives, Meina seeks James out, and they try to find shelter in one another. Akinti, himself a product of London's council estates (public housing), captures in gracious and resonant prose the fear, anger, and sadness of life in the violent and poverty-stricken slums of London's East End. (Feb.)
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The rage of young black men in Somalia and in the London slums fuels this heartbreaking first novel, and just as intense is the tenderness among friends, family, and lovers. The story is told in alternating narratives by two young people: James (who survives a dual suicide attempt with his best friend, Ashvin, in London) and Ashvin’s grieving sister, Meina, who saw her academic parents gang-raped and murdered back in Somalia and then was saved by her brother when her aunt sold her to six husbands. The growing love between James and Meina, which develops after she comes to London, is never saccharine, even as it does bring hope in a harsh global world, a world where James’ oldest brother shoots himself and his fellow drug-dealing brothers. The young people’s quotes from Langston Hughes, Richard Wright, and James Baldwin add to the intensity, especially because there are no heavy political messages. The author, a Nigerian raised in London, shows the universality of his heroes, the global connections in the story, and the nature of diversity right now. --Hazel Rochman

Edition details

• Publisher: Free Press
• Publication date: 2010
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 143917217X
• ISBN 13: 9781439172179
• Binding: Paperback
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 210