Forest Gate

In his debut novel, Peter Akinti draws from his experience as a child of the slums to create a brutal, traumatic, and powerful depiction of the struggle and devastation facing contemporary London's black youths. Akinti's prose is unapologetically graphic, and rightfully so, because it is in its darkest moments that the book showcases its real grit, flinging readers headfirst into a world where an eerie stoicism is the only defense against unbearable tragedy. Ashvin and Meina are Somalian refugees who, after witnessing the horrific murder of their parents, escape their war-ravaged homeland and end up in Forest Gate, a gang-torn housing project in East London. Ashvin finds a troubled kindred spirit in James, whose dysfunctional family life has left him emotionally shattered. Even though some of the characters, such as James' drug-dealing brothers, function as quasi-stereotypes, this is an effective authorial choice, as their interchangeability, in Akinti's experience, accurately reflects how the British government and media view them, as no more than a group of young, thugged-out black delinquents. Forest Gate wrestles valiantly—and sometimes expertly—with the enduring theme of racial injustice, in the tradition Richard Wright and James Baldwin. Infusing the novel with his own 21st-century twist, Akinti succeeds in capturing the same sad magic as his predecessors.